ABRAHAM  LINCOLN 


AN   ADDRESS 


DELIVERED    BEFORE 


R,  E.  Lee  Camp,  No.  1,  Confederate  Veterans, 


AT 


RICHMOND,  VA.,  ON  OCTOBER  29TH,  1909, 


BY 


HON.  GEORGE  L.  CHRISTIAN. 


PUBLISHED  BY  ORDER  OF  THE  CAMP. 


RICHMOND: 

WM,  ELLIS  JONES,  BOOK   AND  JOB   PRINTER. 
1909. 


ABRAHAM  LINCOLN. 


AN   ADDRESS 


DELIVERED    BEFORE 


R,  E,  Lee  Camp,  No,  1,  Confederate  Veterans, 


AT 


RICHMOND,  VA.,  ON  OCTOBER  29TH,  1909, 


BY 


HON.  GEORGE  L.  CHRISTIAN. 


PUBLISHED  BY  ORDER  OF  THE  CAMP. 


RICHMOND: 

WM.  ELLIS   JONES,   BOOK    AND   JOB   PRINTER. 
1909. 


3  7  3.7  L 

t* 

ABRAHAM  LINCOLN. 


"Out  of  the  old  fieldes, 
Cometh  al  this  new  corne." — Chaucer. 

COMRADES  OF  LEE  CAMP,  LADIES  AND  GENTLEMEN: 

By  a  resolution  adopted  by  the  unanimous  vote  of  this 
Camp,  I  have  been  asked  to  deliver  an  address  on  the  life  and 
character  of  Abraham  Lincoln,  late  President  of  the  United  States. 
Believing  the  request  a  reasonable  one  to  be  preferred  by  the  Camp, 
and  that  such  a  request  from  the  Camp  to  one  of  its  members  is 
equivalent  to  a  command,  I  have,  with  some  hesitation,  and  with 
greater  distrust  of  my  ability  to  meet  the  expectations  of  the 
Camp,  undertaken  the  fulfilment  of  the  uncongenial  and  perhaps 
unprofitable  task  thus  imposed  upon  me.  I  wish  to  state  in  the 
outset  that  what  I  shall  say  on  this  occasion  will  be  'said  in  no 
spirit  of  carping  criticism,  with  no  desire  to  do  injustice  to  my 
remarkable  subject,  and  will  be  as  free  from  sectional  prejudice  and 
passion  as  one  who  has  suffered  as  I  have,  by  the  conduct  of  Mr. 
Lincoln  and  his  followers,  can  make  it;  and  I  shall  also  strive  to 
say  what  I  do  say  solely  in  the  interest  of  the  truth  of  history. 

"Ye  shall  know  the  truth,  and  the  truth  shall  make  you  free," 
is  a  maxim  of  the  Divine  Teacher,  and  it  embodies  a  principle  which 
should  be  the  "guiding  star"  of  every  writer  of  history.  The  truth 
about  the  cause,  the  character  and  conduct  of  the  leaders  in  the 
great  conflict  from  '61  to  '65  is  all  that  we  of  the  South  ask,  or 
have  a  right  to  ask,  and  we  should  ~be  satisfied  with  nothing  less 
than  the  truth  about  these. 

Whenever  the  good  character  of  a  person  is  put  in  issue,  the 
party  avouching  that  good  character  challenges  the  opposite  side 
to  show,  by  all  legitimate  means,  the  contrary  of  the  fact  thus 
put  in  issue.  In  the  war  between  the  States  the  character  and 
conduct  of  the  leaders  on  both  sides  were  necessarily  involved,  and 
especially  was  this  true  of  the  character  and  conduct  of  the  official 
heads  of  the  respective  sides.  Last  year  was  the  centennial  of  the 
birth  of  Jefferson  Davis,  the  civic  leader  and  official  head  of  the 
Southern  Confederacy;  the  South  duly  celebrated  that  centennial 


and  avouched  to  the  world  the  conduct  and  the  character  of  their 
representative  head  and  his  leadership.,  and  \ye  think  every  one 
who  loves  the  memory  of  the  Confederacy,  and  of  our  great  struggle 
to  maintain  it,  ought  to  feel  gratified  and  satisfied  with  the  result. 

This  year  is  the  centennial  of  the  birth  of  Abraham  Lincoln,  the 
civic  leader  and  official  head  of  the  United  States  during  the  exist- 
ence of  the  Confederacy,  and  the  Xorth  has  with  singular  temerity, 
as  it  seems  to  us,  thrust  his  character  and  conduct  before  the  world, 
some  of  them  even  claiming  that  he  was  the  "greatest,  wisest  and 
godliest  man  that  has  appeared  on  the  earth  since  Christ."  (See 
Facts  and  Falsehoods,  4.) 

This  "being  true,  and  since  some  Southern  writers  have  united  in 
these,  it  seems  to  us,  unmerited  adulations  of  this  man,  no  apology 
would  seem  to  be  necessary  for  enquiring  as  to  the  real  basis  of 
the  claims  of  these  eulogists  of  Mr.  Lincoln  to  the  admiration, 
veneration  and  alleged  greatness  now  attempted  to  be  heaped  upon 
him. 

In  this  discussion  we  would,  if  we  could  do  so  and  speak  the 
truth,  gladly  adopt  the  Eoman  maxim,  to  speak  nothing  but  good 
of  the  dead.  But  since  some  of  Mr.  Lincoln's  nearest  and  dearest 
friends  (?)  have  not  seen  fit,  or  been  able  to  do  this,  surely  a 
Southern  writer  should  not  be  criticized  or  judged  harshly  for 
repeating  what  some  of  these  friends,  who  apparently  knew  him 
best  and  loved  him  most,  and  who  tell  us  they  are  only  telling 
what  they  know  to  be  true  of  this  remarkable  man,  have  to  say 
about  him,  his  character  and  his  conduct. 

That  the  career  of  Mr.  Lincoln  was  one  of  the  most  remarkable 
recorded  in  history,  and  that  he  must  have  had  some  element  of 
character  which  made  that  career  possible,  no  one  will  deny.  But 
that  he  was  the  pious  and  exemplary  Christian,  the  great  and 
good  man,  "the  prophet,  priest  and  king,"  the  "Washington,"  the 
"Moses,"  the  "Second  to  Christ,"  now  being  portrayed  to  the 
world  by  some  of  his  prejudiced  and  intemperate  admirers,  we 
unhesitatingly  deny,  and  we  think  it  our  duty,  both  to  ourselves  and 
to  our  children,  to  correct  some  of  the  false  impressions  attempted 
to  be  made  about  this  man's  character  and  career,  let  the  criticisms 
or  consequences  be  what  they  may. 

We  have  no  right  to  do  so,  and  we  do  not  object,  in  the  least, 
that  Mr.  Lincoln  shall  be  put  forward  as  the  representative  man 


5 

and  ideal  of  the  Xorth;  but  we  do  object  to,  and  protest  against, 
his  being  proclaimed  to  the  world  as  the  exemplar  and  representa- 
tive of  the  South  and  its  people.  We  proclaim  Washington,  Henry, 
Jefferson,  Madison,  Monroe,  Jefferson  Davis,  Eobert  E.  Lee,  "Stone- 
wall" Jackson,  Joseph  E.  and  Albert  Sydney  Johnston,  Wade  Hamp- 
ton, Jeb  Stuart,  and  such  like  men,  as  our  heroes  and  ideals  and 
as  the  exemplars  for  our  children  and  our  children's  children. 

REASONS  FOE  LINCOLN'S  FAME. 

There  are  three  reasons  which  we  think  in  great  measure  account 
for  the  erroneous  conceptions  and  extravagant  portrayals  now  being 
made  of  Mr.  Lincoln,  viz: 

(1)  The  cause  of  which  he  was  the  official  head  has,  temporarily 
at  least,  been  deemed  a  success. 

(2)  The  manner  of  his  death  was  such  as  to  shock  all  right- 
thinking  people  and  to  create  sympathy  in  his  behalf;  for,  like  the 
great  Eoman  Germanicus,  it  may  well  be  said,  he  was  most  fortunate 
in  the  circumstances  of  his  death. 

(3)  He  was  the  first  President  of  the  Eepublican  party — the 
party  which  has  practically  dominated  this  country  ever  since  Mr. 
Lincoln's  first  election. 

The  acts  and  doings  of  that  party  during  the  time  he  was  its 
official  head,  many  of  which  were  illegal,  unconstitutional,  tyran- 
nical and  oppressive,  will  be  judged,  to  a  degree  at  least,  by 
the  charaetcr  and  conduct  of  the  man  who  held  that  official  posi- 
tion; and  the  representatives  of  that  party  have,  therefore,  hesi- 
tated at  nothing  to  try  to  make  it  appear  that  their  official  leader 
was  a  great  and  good  man,  and  that,  therefore,  they  were  justified 
in  following  his  leadership. 

In  the  course  of  this  address  we  shall  say  but  little  of  Mr.  Lin- 
coln's private  life,  and  shall  refer  to  it  only  to  show  that  much  of 
it  was  utterly  at  variance  with  the  life  of  the  man  now  being  por- 
trayed to  us;  and  we  shall  certainly  not  criticise  his  humble  and 
obscure  birth  and  origin,  but,  on  the  contrary,  we  extol  him  for 
being  able  to  rise  so  far  as  he  did  above  these,  believing,  as  we  do, 
with  Pope,  that 

"Honor  and  shame  from  no  condition  rise, 
Act  well  your  part;  there  all  the  honor  lies." 


WAS  THE  NORTHERN  CAUSE  SUCCESSFUL? 

As  to  the  cause  of  which  he  was  the  official  head  being  successful, 
we  will  only  remark  that  it  was  certainly  successful  in  preventing 
the  establishment  of  the  Southern  Confederacy  within  certain  terri- 
torial limits ;  but  whether  successful  in  any  other  sense.,  remains  yet 
to  be  determined.  The  Washington  Post  of  August  14,  1906,  said : 

"Let  us  be  frank  about  it.  The  day  the  people  of  the  North 
responded  to  Abraham  Lincoln's  call  for  troops  to  coerce  sov- 
ereign States,  the  Eepublic  died  and  the  Nation  was  born." 

And  a  Massachusetts  man  has  written  of  the  Confederates  that — 

"Such  character  and  achievement  were  not  all  in  vain;  that 
though  the  Confederacy  fell  as  an  actual  physical  power,  it 
lives  eternally  in  its  just  cause — the  cause  of  constitutional 
liberty." 

MANNER  OF  LINCOLN^  DEATH  AND  THE  MURDER  OF  MRS.   SURRATT. 

As  to  the  manner  of  Mr.  Lincoln's  death,  aside  from  the  abhor- 
rence with  which  we  regard  and  denounce  every  form  of  assassina- 
tion, we  have  to  remark:  (1)  That  it  really  exalted  his  name  and 
fame  as  nothing  before  it  happened  had  done,  or,  in  our  opinion, 
could  have  done;  and  (2)  as  dastardly,  as  cowardly  and  cruel  as 
that  deed  was,  it  was,  in  our  opinion,  not  so  dastardly,  cowardly  or 
cruel,  and  no  more  criminal  in  the  eye  of  the  law,  than  the  murder 
of  Mrs.  Surratt,  an  innocent  woman,  by  Andrew  Johnson,  Edwin 
M.  Stanton,  Joseph  Holt,  David  Hunter  and  their  wicked  and 
cowardly  associates.  The  act  of  Booth  was  that  of  a  frenzied 
fanatic,  taking  his  life  in  his  own  hands,  and  attempting  to  avenge 
his  people's  wrongs  by  ridding  the  world  of  the  man  he  believed 
to  be  the  author  of  those  wrongs;  the  act  of  Johnson,  Stanton  and 
others  in  murdering  Mrs.  Surratt  was  the  deliberate  and  criminal 
act  of  cruel,  cowardly  men,  perpetrated  on  a  helpless,  harmless  and 
innocent  woman,  through  instrumentalities  and  forms  as  cruel  as 
any  that  were  ever  devised  in  the  darkest  ages  of  the  world,  but 
by  methods  and  at  a  time  when  the  perpetrators  knew  that  their 
cowardly  bodies  were  safe  from  all  harm.  (See  DeWitt's  Assassi- 
nation of  Lincoln,  p.  92,  et  seq.)  This  woman  was  tried  and  con- 
victed by  a  military  commission,  of  which  General  David  Hunter 
was  the  president.  It  was  pointed  out  to  the  so-called  court,  by  that 


great  lawyer,  Reverdy  Johnson,  that  such  a  tribunal  had  no  juris- 
diction to  try  the  case,  and  it  was  afterwards  expressedly  so  decided 
in  Ex  parte  Milligan,  4th  Wallace.  But  this  commission  convicted 
this  woman,  who  even  such  a  creature  as  Ben  Butler  said  was  per- 
fectly innocent,  thereby  bringing  themselves  within  the  principle 
stated  by  Lord  Brougham  in  a  famous  case,  when  he  said: 

"When  the  laws  can  act,  every  other  mode  of  punishing 
supposed  crimes  is  itself  an  enormous  crime." 

EXAGGERATIONS  ABOUT  LINCOLN  AND  APOTHEOSIS  AFTER  HIS  ASSASSI- 

TION. 
• 
In  all  our  reading,  we  know  of  no  man  whose  merits  have  been 

so  exaggerated  and  whose  demerits  have  been  so  minimized  as  have 
those  of  Abraham  Lincoln.  Indeed,  this  course  has  been  so  insist- 
ently and  persistently  pursued  by  some  Xorthern  writers  that  it 
amounts  to  a  patent  perversion  of  the  truth,  and  a  positive  fraud 
on  the  public. 

General  Don  Piatt,  an  officer  in  the  Federal  Army,  a  man  of  char- 
acter and  culture,  says: 

"With  us,  when  a  leader  dies,  all  good  men  go  to  lying  about 
him.  *  *  *  Abraham  Lincoln  has  almost  disappeared  from 
human  knowledge.  I  hear  of  him,  and  I  read  of  him  in  eulo- 
gies and  biographies,  but  I  fail  to  recognize  the  man  I  knew 
in  life."  (Facts  and  Falsehoods,  p.  36-7 ;  Men  Who  Saved  the 
Union,  p.  28.) 

William  H.  Herndon,  Mr.  Lincoln's  close  friend  and  law  partner 
for  twenty  years,  who,  we  are  informed,  wrote  a  biography  of  him 
in  1866,  which  is  said  to  have  been  bought  up  and  suppressed,  sim- 
ply because  it  told  the  unvarnished  truth,  said : 

"I  deplore  the  many  publications  pretending  to  be  biog- 
raphies of  Lincoln,  which  teemed  from  the  press  so  long  as 
there  was  hope  for  gain.  Out  of  the  mass  of  these  works,  of 
only  one  (Holland's)  is  it  possible  to  speak  with  any  degree 
of  respect."  (Facts  and  Falsehoods,  p.  37;  Lamon's  Preface, 
iii.) 

And  Ward  Hill  Lamon,  who  was  Mr.  Lincoln's  close  friend  and 
at  one  time  his  law  partner,  who  was  especially  selected  by  Mr. 
Lincoln  to  accompany  him  on  his  midnight  journey  to  the  capital 
when  he  was  to  be  inaugurated,  who  was  appointed  by  him  marshal 


8 

of  the  District  of  Columbia,  who  was  probably  his  closest  and  most 
confidential  friend  and  adviser  during  his  whole  official  life,  says 
immediately  after  his  assassination,  "there  was  the  fiercest  rivalry 
as  to  who  should  canonize  him  in  the  most  solemn  words,  who  should 
compare  him  to  the  most  sacred  character  in  all  history.  He  was 
prophet,  priest  and  king.  He  was  Washington.  He  was  Moses. 
He  was  likened  to  Christ  the  Bedeemer.  He  was  likened  to  God." 
(Facts  and  Falsehoods,  p.  9;  Lamon,  312.) 

Again  says  Lamon: 

"Lincoln's  apotheosis  was  not  only  planned  but  executed 
by  men  who  were  unfriendly  to  him  while  he  liv«d,  and  that 
the  deification  took  place  with  showy  magnificence  some  time 
after  the  great  man's  lips  were  sealed  in  death.  Men  who  had 
exhausted  the  resources  of  their  skill  and  ingenuity  in  venomous 
detraction  of  the  living  Lincoln,  especially  during  the  last 
years  of  his  life,  were  the  first  when  the  assassin's  bullet  had 
closed  the  career  of  the  great-hearted  statesman  to  undertake 
the  self-imposed  task  of  guarding  his  memory — not  as  a  human 
being  endowed  with  mighty  intellect  and  extraordinary  vir- 
tues, but  as  a  god"  (Lamon's  Recollections  of  Lincoln,  p. 
169.) 

And  again  he  says : 

For  days  and  nights  after  his  assassination  "it  was  consid- 
ered treason  to  be  seen  in  public  with  a  smile  on  the  face. 
Men  who  spoke  evil  of  the  fallen  chief,  or  ventured  a  doubt 
concerning  the  ineffable  purity  and  saintliness  of  his  life,  were 
pursued  by  mobs,  were  beaten  to  death  with  paving  stones,  or 
strung  up  by  the  neck  to  lamp  posts."  (Lamon,  312.) 

We  shall  attempt  to  show  you  that  this  whole  apotheosis  business 
not  only  took  place,  as  Lamon  says,  after  Mr.  Lincoln's  assassination, 
and  because  of  the  manner  of  his  death,  but  why  it  was  begun 
then,  and  has  continued  until  this  day. 

We  have  already  said  that  Mr.  Lincoln  was  the  first  President 
of  the  Republican  party.  He  was  the  official  head  of  that  party 
through  the  most  terrible  and  trying  conflict  recorded  in  history. 
The  leaders  of  that  party  were,  and  are  still,  in  need  of  a  real  hero. 
They  knew  that  they  and  their  conduct  would  be  judged  by  the 
character  and  conduct  of  their  official  head.  The  country  was 
stunned  and  dazed  by  the  assassination  of  this  leader — the  first 
assassination  of  the  kind  in  its  history.  The  South  was  prostrate 


9 

and  helpless  at  the  feet  of  the  North,  and  its  leaders  charged  with 
complicity  in  that  awful  crime.  That  time,  of  all  others,  afforded 
the  leaders  of  the  Eepublican  party — always  quick  and  bold  in 
action — the  opportunity  to  deify  this  its  first  President ;  and  those 
leaders,  with  a  stroke  of  audacity  and  genius  never  surpassed,  seized 
upon  that  opportunity  and  manufactured  a  false  glamour  with 
which  they  have  surrounded  the  name  and  fame  of  their  chosen 
head  calculated  to  deceive  the  "very  elect";  and  they  have  so 
persisted  in  their  efforts  in  this  direction,  from  that  day  to  this, 
that  the  lapse  of  nearly  half  a  century  has  failed  to  dispel  the  delu- 
sions manufactured  at  that  time  and  amid  these  surroundings  by 
these  people.  Mr.  Lincoln  is  credited  with  the  saying: 

"You  can  fool  some  of  the  people  all  the  time;  you  can  fool 
all  the  people  some  of  the  time,  but  it  is  impossible  to  fool  all 
the  people  all  the  time." 

We  believe  the  time  is  coming,  if  it  is  not  already  here,  when  the 
scales  will  fall  from  the  eyes  of  a  great  many  in  regard  to  the  true 
history  and  character  of  this  chosen  hero  of  the  North. 

CHARACTERISTICS    OF    LINCOLN. 

Of  course,  within  the  limits  of  this  paper,  we  shall  make  no 
attempt  to  do  more  than  to  give  some  glimpses  of  the  true  charac- 
ter, characteristics  and  conduct  of  Mr.  Linclon,  nor  shall  we 
attempt  to  follow  his  biographers  in  their  details  of  the  career  and 
conduct  of  this  enigmatical  man. 

Lamon  says  he  was  "morbid,  moody,  meditative,  thinking  much 
of  himself,  and  the  things  pertaining  to  himself,  regarding  other 
men  as  instruments  furnished  to  hand  for  the  accomplishment  of 
views  which  he  knew  were  important  to  him,  and  therefore  consid- 
ered important  to  the  public.  Mr.  Lincoln  was  a  man  apart  from 
the  rest  of  his  kind.  *  *  *  He  seemed  to  make  boon  companions 
of  the  coarsest  men  on  the  list  of  his  acquaintances — low,  vulgar, 
unfortunate  creatures."  *  *  *  "It  was  said  that  he  had  no 
heart — that  is,  no  personal  attachments  warm  and  strong  enough 
to  govern  his  passions.  It  was  seldom  that  he  praised  anybody, 
and  when  he  did,  it  was  not  a  rival  or  an  equal  in  the  struggle  for 
popularity  and  power."  *  *  *  "Xo  one  knew  better  how  to  damn 
with  faint  praise,  or  to  divide  the  glory  of  another  by  being  the 


10 

first  and  frankest  to  acknowledge  it." — (Lamon,  pp.  480-1.)  *  *  * 
"He  did  nothing  out  of  mere  gratitude,  and  forgot  the  devotion  of 
his  warmest  partizans  as  soon  as  the  occasion  for  their  services 
passed." — Id.,  p.  482.  *  *  *  "Notwithstanding  his  overwean- 
ing  ambition.,  and  the  breathless  eagerness  with  which  he  pursued 
the  objects  of  it,  he  had  not  a  particle  of  sympathy  with  the  great 
mass  of  his  fellow-citizens  who  were  engaged  in  similar  struggles 
for  place."— Id.,  p.  483. 

Now  mark  you,  this  is  what  Lamon,  his  closest  friend,  and  most 
ardent  admirer,  has  to  say  of  the  "make  up"  of  Mr.  Lincoln.  Is 
this  the  stuff  of  which  the  world's  great  characters,  heroes,  martyrs, 
and  the  exemplars  for  our  children  are  made?  Surely  it  would 
seem  not,  and  further  comment  is  deemed  unnecessary. 

LINCOLN  NOT  A  CHRISTIAN. 

One  of  the  commonest,  and  one  of  the  most  attractive,  claims 
now  asserted  by  the  admirers  of  Mr.  Lincoln  is,  that  he  was  a  pious 
man  and  a  Christian.  Lamon  tells  us  after  his  assassination  he 
was  compared  to  the  Saviour  and  Eedeemer  of  mankind.  One  of  his 
reverend  admirers  compares  his  assassination  to  the  crucifixion  of 
our  Lord;  and  since  both  of  these  events  occurred  on  Good  Friday, 
this  writer  says  "even  the  day  was  fit."  But  since  Mr.  Lincoln's 
"taking  off"  was  in  a  theater,  it  may  be  noted  that  this  fanatical 
divine  says  nothing  as  to  the  fitness  of  the  place  at  which  this 
"taking  off'  occurred. 

Another  divine,  in  an  oration  delivered  this  year  on  the  centen- 
nial anniversary  of  Mr.  Lincoln's  birth,  begins  it  with  the  words : 

"There  was  a  man  sent  from  God  whose  name  was  Abraham 
Lincoln." 

He  then  speaks  of  him  as  being  "like  unto  Melchizedek,"  and  as 
the  "one  great  man,  and  mystery  and  miracle  of  the  nineteenth  cen- 
tury." 

It  seems  to  us  that  the  real  mystery  here  is  the  fact  that  any  one 
anywhere  should  be  so  foolish  in  this  enlightened  age  as  to  suppose 
he  can  make  sensible  people  swallow  any  such  twaddle,  .nonsense 
and  sacrilege  as  this. 

Herndon  says  of  Mr.  Lincoln's  alleged  Christianity: 

"Lincoln   was   a   deep-grounded   infidel.     He   disliked    and 


Jl 

despised  churches.  He  never  entered  a  church  except  to  scoff 
and  ridicule.  On  coming  from  a  church  he  would  mimic  the 
preacher.  Before  running  for  any  office,  he  wrote  a  book 
against  Christianity  and  the  Bible.  He  showed  it  to  some 
of  his  friends  and  read  extracts.  A  man  named  Hill  was 
greatly  shocked  and  urged  Lincoln  not  to  publish  it;  urged  it 
would  kill  him  politically.  Hill  got  this  book  in  his  hands, 
opened  the  stove  door,  and  it  went  up  in  flames  and  ashes. 
After  that  Lincoln  became  more  discreet,  and  when  running 
for  office  often  used  words  and  phrases  to  make  it  appear  that 
he  was  a  Christian.  He  never  changed  on  this  subject;  he 
lived  and  died  a  deep-grounded  infidel."  (Facts  and  False- 
hoods, p.  53.)  (See  also  Lamon,  489-493.) 

Lamon  says : 

"Mr.  Lincoln  was  never  a  member  of  any  church,  nor  did 
he  believe  in  the  inspiration  of  the  Scriptures  in  the  sense  un- 
derstood by  evangelical  Christians."  *  *  *  "Overwhelming 
testimony  out  of  many  mouths,  and  none  stronger  than  out  of 
his  own,  place  these  facts  beyond  controversy."  (Lamon,  p. 
486.)  *  *  *  "When  he  went  to  church  at  all,  he  went  to 
mock,  and  came  away  to  mimic."  (Id.,  p.  487.) 

Lamon  further  says : 

"It  was  not  until  after  Mr.  Lincoln's  death  that  his  alleged 
'  orthodoxy  became  the  principal  topic  of  his  eulogists;  but  since 
then  the  effort  on  the  part  of  some  political  writers  and  speak- 
ers to  impress  the  public  mind  erroneously  seems  to  have  been 
general  and  systematic."     (Id.,  487.) 

He  then  inserts  the  letters  of  a  number  of  Mr.  Lincoln's  closest 
friends  and  neighbors,  all  of  whom  fully  sustain  his  statements. 
One  of  these  says: 

"Lincoln  was  enthusiastic  in  his  infidelity." 
Another  says: 

"Lincoln  went  further  against  Christian  beliefs  and  doctrines 
and  principles  than  any  man  I  ever  heard.  He  shocked  me." 
(Id.,  488.) 

Another   (Herndon)   says:  \ 

"Lincoln  told  me  a  thousand  times  that  he  did  not  believe 
the  Bible  was  a  revelation  from  God  as  the  Christian  world 
contends."  *  *  *  "And  that  Jesus  was  not  the  Son  of 
God."  (Id.,  489.) 


Another  (Judge  David  Davis)  says: 

"He  had  no  faith,  in  the  Christian  sense  of  the  term."  (Id., 
489.) 

Lamon  then  quotes  Mrs.  Lincoln  as  saying: 

"Mr.  Lincoln  had  no  hope  and  no  faith,  in  the  usual  accept- 
ance of  those  words."  (Id.,  489.) 

And  Mr.  Nicolay,  Lincoln's  private  secretary,  as  saying: 

"Mr.  Lincoln  did  not,  to  my  knowledge,  in  any  way  change 
his  religious  views,  opinions  or  beliefs  from  the  time  he  left 
Springfield  to  the  day  of  his  death."  (Id.,  492.) 

It  seems  to  us  that  these  statements  from  these  sources  ought  to 
settle  this  question,  and  that  it  is  wrong,  and  nothing  short  of  an 
outrage  on  the  truth  of  history  to  assert  that  Mr.  Lincoln  was, 
or  ever  claimed  to  be,  a  Christian;  that  such  an  assertion  can  only 
reflect  on  those  who  make  it,  and  must  bring  upon  them  the  appli- 
cation of  the  maxim,  falsus  in  uno  falsus  in  omnibus;  for  surely 
those  who  are  so  reckless  as  to  misrepresent  a  fact  of  this  nature 
will  not  hesitate  to  misrepresent  any  other  fact  that  it  suits  them 
to  misrepresent  or  to  misstate. 

CONTRADICTIONS  OF  CHARACTER. 

We  come  now  to  consider  some  other  phases  of  this  strange 
man,  his  conduct  and  his  character. 

First.  We  think  it  can  be  safely  affirmed  that  Mr.  Lincoln  was 
one  of  the  most  secretive,  crafty,  cunning  and  contradictory  charac- 
ters in  all  history,  and  therein  lies,  we  believe,  the  true  reason 
why  the  world  now  deems  him  great.  In  short,  he  and  his  unscrupu- 
lous eulogists  have,  for  the  time  being,  outwitted  and  deceived 
the  public.  Mr.  Seward  said  his  "cunning  amounted  to  genius"; 
and  if  there  ever  was  on  this  earth  a  judge  of  real  cunning,  William 
H.  Seward  was  that  man.  The  best  evidence  of  the  contradictions 
of  his  character  is  furnished  by  Holland,  one  of  his  most  partisan 
admirers  and  biographers.  Mr.  Holland  says,  at  page  241 : 

"To  illustrate  the  effect  of  the  peculiarity  of  Mr.  Lincoln's 
intercourse  with  men,  it  may  be  said  that  men  who  knew  him 
through  all  his  professional  and  political  life  have  offered 
opinions  as  diametrically  opposed  as  this,  viz :  That  he  was  a 


13 

very  ambitious  man,  and  that  he  was  without  a  particle  of 
ambition;  that  he  was  one  of  the  saddest  men  that  ever  lived, 
and  that  he  was  one  of  the  jolliest  men  that  ever  lived;  that 
he  was  very  religious,  but  that  he  was  not  a  Christian;  that 
he  was  a  Christian,  but  did  not  know  it;  that  he  was  so  far 
from  being  a  religious  man  or  Christian  that  the  least  said 
on  that  subject  the  better;  that  he  was  the  most  cunning 
man  in  America,  and  that  he  had  not  a  particle  of  cunning 
in  him;  that  he  had  the  strongest  personal  attachments,  and 
that  he  had  no  personal  attachments  at  all,  only  a  general 
good  feeling  toward  everybody ;  that  he  was  a  man  of  indomit- 
able  will,  and  that  he  was  a  man  almost  without  a  will;  that 
he  was  a  tyrant,  and  that  he  was  the  softest-hearted,  most 
brotherly  man  that  ever  lived;  that  he  was  remarkable  for  his 
pure-mindedness,  and  that  he  was  the  foulest  in  his  jests  and 
stories  of  any  man  in  the  country;  that  he  was  the  wittiest 
man,  and  that  he  was  only  a  retailer  of  the  wit  of  others; 
that  his  apparent  candor  and  fairness  were  only  apparent,  and 
that  they  were  as  real  as  his  head  and  his  hands ;  that  he  was  a 
boor,  and  that  he  was  in  all  essential  respects  a  gentleman ;  that 
he  was  a  leader  of  the  people,  and  that 'he  was  always  led  by 
the  people;  that  he  was  cool  and  impassive,  and  that  he  was 
susceptible  of  the  strongest  passions.'* 

Now  it  seems  to  us,  with  all  deference  to  the  opinions  of  others, 
that  any  man  who  could  play  the  chameleon  and  present  to  the 
world  such  contrasts  and  contradictions  of  character  as  are  here 
described  must  be  singularly  devoid  of  the  finest  ingredients  which 
are  essential  to  real  greatness,  viz :  unwavering  and  steadfast  devo- 
tion to  principle  and  to  duty  and  that  uniform  bearing  towards  his 
fellow-man  which  can  only  lift  those  who  have  these  characteristics 
into  the  atmosphere  of  true  greatness. 

Another  of  Mr.  Lincoln's  friends,  a  brother  lawyer,  having  been 
asked  to  describe  him,  says : 

"My  opinion  of  him  was  formed  by  a  personal  and  profes- 
sional acquaintance  of  over  ten  years,  and  has  not  been  altered 
or  influenced  by  any  of  his  promotions  in  public  life.  The 
adulations  by  base  multitudes  of  a  living,  and  the  pageantry 
surrounding  a  dead  President,  do  not  shake  my  well-settled 
convictions  of  the  man's  mental  calibre.  Phrenologically  and 
physiologically,  the  man  was  a  sort  of  monstrosity.  His  frame 
was  large,  bony  and  muscular;  his  head  was  small  and  dispro- 
portionately shaped;  he  had  large,  square  jaws;  a  large,  heavy 
nose;  a  small,  lascivious  mouth;  soft,  tender,  bluish  eyes.  I 
would  say  he  was  a  cross  between  Venus  and  Hercules.  I 


14 

believe  it  to  be  inconsistent  with  the  law  of  human  organism 
for  any  such  creature  to  possess  a  mind  capable  of  anything 
great.  The  man's  mind  partook  of  the  incongruities  of  his 
body.  It  was  the  peculiarities  of  his  mental,  and  the  oddity 
of  his  physical  structure,  as  well  as  his  head,  that  singled 
him  out  from  the  mass  of  men."  (See  3  Herndon  &  Weik,  p. 
584.) 

Mr.  Morse  in  the  preface  of  his  biography  makes  this  very  re- 
markable statement.  He  says : 

"If  the  world  ever  settles  down  to  the  acceptance  of  any 
definite,  accurate  picture  of  him  (Lincoln),  it  will  surely  be  a 
false  picture.  There  must  always  be  vague,  indefinable  uncer- 
tainties in  any  presentation  of  him  which  shall  be  truly  made." 

Is  this  the  record  of  any  other  of  the  world's  great  heroes  and 
leaders?  Will  any  accurate  picture  of  any  one  of  them  "surely 
be  a  false  picture"?  What  does  Mr.  Morse  mean,  anyhow? 

We  have  heretofore  referred  to  the  fact  that  Mr.  Lincoln  was 
secretive,  cunning,  crafty  and  tricky,  and  certainly  his  course  dur- 
ing his  public  life,  as  will  be  pointed  out  later  on,  fully  sustains 
this  view  of  his  character.  We  have  already  noted  what  Mr.  Seward 
had  to  say  of  this  feature  of  his  character.  Herndon  says: 

"The  first  impression  of  a  stranger,  on  seeing  Mr.  Lincoln 
walk,  was  that  he  was  a  tricky  man."  (Facts  and  Falsehoods, 
p.  54.) 

The  duplicity  practiced  by  him  in  preventing  the  renomination 
of  Hamlin,  as  described  by  Colonel  McClure  in  "Lincoln  and  Men 
of  War  Times,"  is  a  striking  illustration  of  his  ability  in  this  direc- 
tion. 

Stanton  says: 

"I  met  Lincoln  at  the  bar  and  found  him  a  low,  cunning 
clown."  (Facts  and  Falsehoods,  p.  19.) 

And  several  of  his  biographers  make  reference  to  his  secretive- 
ness,  cunning  and  craftiness  as  among  his  chief  characteristics. 

OPINIONS     OF     CONTEMPORARIES. 

But  one  of  the  best  evidences  of  the  real  worth  and  true  character 
of  a  man  is  shown  by  the  estimation  in  which  he  was  held 
by  his  contemporaries  and  those  who  were  brought  in  daily  con- 


15 

tact  with  him.  Up  to  the  time  of  the  assassination  of  Mr.  Lincoln, 
several  members  of  his  cabinet  were  engaged  in  what  Lamon  calls 
"venomous  detractions"  of  his  character  both  as  a  man  and  as  a 
statesman.  Nor  were  these  detractions  by  any  means  confined  to 
his  cabinet.  Besides  Seward,  Stanton  and  Chase  of  the  cabinet, 
Hamlin,  Freemont,  Sumner,  Trumbull,  Wade,  Wilson,  Thad.  Ste- 
vens, Beecher,  Henry  Winter  Davis,  Greeley  and  Wendell  Phillips 
were  among  those  who  did  not  hesitate  to  denounce  and  belittle 
him  in  every  way  in  their  power.  Members  of  his  cabinet  were  in 
the  habit  of  referring  to  him  as  "the  baboon  at  the  other  end  of 
the  avenue,"  and  some  senators  referred  to  him  as  the  "idiot  of 
the  White  House."  (Facts  and  Falsehoods,  p.  9. )  Lamon  says : 

"The  opposition  to  Lincoln  became  more  and  more  offensive. 
The  leaders  resorted  to  every  means  in  their  power  to  thwart 
him.  This  opposition  continued  to  the  end  of  his  life."  (Idem, 
p.  32.) 

Nicolay  and  Hay  say  that — 

"Even  to  complete  strangers  Chase  could  not  write  without 
speaking  slightingly  of  President  Lincoln.  He  kept  up  this 
habit  to  the  end  of  Lincoln's i  life.  Chase's  attitude  toward  the 
President  varied  between  the  limits  of  active  brutality  and 
benevolent  contempt."  (Idem,  p/  12.) 

Colonel  McClure  says: 

"Outside  of  the  cabinet,  the  leaders  were  quite  as  distrustful 
of  President  Lincoln's  ability  to  fill  the  great  office  he  held." 
(Idem,  p.  32.) 

And  Charles  Francis  Adams  (the  elder),  in  his  memorial  address 
on  Mr.  Seward,  says  Mr.  Lincoln,  was  "selected  partly  on  account  of 
the  absence  of  positive  qualities,"  and  "with  a  mind  not  open  to 
the  nature  of  the  crisis." 

And  he  further  says: 

"Mr.  Lincoln  (in  his  contact  with  Seward)  could  not  fail  to 
perceive  the  fact  that  whatever  estimate  he  might  put  on  his 
own  natural  judgment,  he  had  to  deal  with  a  superior  in 
native  intellectual  power,  in  extent  of  acquirement,  in  breadth 
of  philosophical  experience,  and  in  the  force  of  moral  dis- 
cipline. On  the  other  hand,  Mr.  Seward  could  not  have  been 
long  blind  to  the  deficiencies  of  his  chief  in  these  respects." 
(See  Well's  Reply  to  "Adams,  p.  24.) 


16 


DOMINATED  BY  SEWARD  AXD  STAXTON". 

And  Joseph  Medill,  of  the  Chicago  Tribune,  wrote  to  Schuyler 
Colfax  in  1862,,  saying: 

"Seward  must  be  got  out  of  the  cabinet;  he  is  Lincoln's  evil 
genius.  He  has  been  President  de  facto,  and  has  kept  a  sponge 
saturated  with  chloroform  to  Uncle  Abe's  nose  all  the  while, 
except  one  or  two  brief  spells."  (1  Bancroft's  Seward,  p  — .) 

The  "Pennsylvanian"  characterized  Mr.  Lincoln's  first  inaugural 
as  a  "tiger's  claw  concealed  under  the  fur  of  Sewardism,"  and  the 
"Atlas  and  Argus,"  of  Albany,  as  "weak,  rambling,  loose- jointed" 
and  as  "inviting  civil  war."  (See  2  Tarbell's  Lincoln,  p.  13.) 

We  refer  to  these  last  citations  especially  to  show,  what  we  have 
always  maintained,  viz :  that  Mr.  Lincoln  was  dominated  by  Seward 
and  Stanton,  in  our  opinion,  two  of  the  worst  men  this  country 
has  ever  produced. 

In  his  speech  at  Cooper  Institute  in  1864  Wendell  Phillips 
said  : 

"I  judge  Mr.  Lincoln  by  his  acts,  his  violations  of  the  law, 
his  overt-how  of  liberty  in  the  Northern  States.  I  judge  Mr. 
Lincoln  by  his  words  and  deeds,  and  so  judging  him,  I  am 
unwilling  to  trust  Abraham  Lincoln  with  the  future  of  this 
country.  Mr.  Lincoln  is  a  politician;  politicians  are  like  the 
bones  of  a  horse's  fore  shoulder — not  a  straight  one  in  it." 
(Facts  and  Falsehoods,  p.  17.) 

Mr.  Lincoln  was  asked  if  he  had  seen  the  speech  of  Wendell 
Phillips,  and  he  said: 

"I  have  seen  enough  to  satisfy  me  that  I  am  a  failure,  not 
only  in  the  opinion  of  the  people  in  rebellion,  but  of  many 
distinguished  politicians  of  my  own  party."  (Lamon's  Recol- 
lections, p.  187.) 

But  enough  of  this;  and  we  have  made  these  citations  only  for 
the  purpose  of  showing,  first,  that  the  character  of  Mr.  Lincoln,  as 
now  presented  to  the  world,  is  utterly  at  variance  with  his  character 
as  understood  by  those  who  knew  him  best  and  were  daily  brought 
in  contact  with  him  whilst  living;  and,  secondly,  to  show  that  if 
his  character  was  such  as  is  presented  to  us  by  those  who  best 
knew  him  in  life,  that  character  was  in  keeping  with  his  conduct 
towards  the  people  of  the  South  in  the  great  war  from  '61  to  '65. 


17 


SOME  VIOLATIONS  OF  THE  CONSTITUTION. 

We,  therefore,  come  now  to  consider  some  of  the  things  (because 
we  can  only  refer  to  a  few  of  them)  which  Mr.  Lincoln  did  in 
bringing  on,  and  in  the  conduct  of,  that  war. 

When  Mr.  Lincoln  was  inaugurated  as  President  of  the  United 
States  on  the  4th  of  March,  1861,  he  took  an  oath  to  support  the 
Constitution  of  the  United  States.  Says  one  of  his  most  ardent 
admirers,  McClure: 

"As  the  sworn  executive  of  the  nation,  it  was  his  duty  to 
obey  the  Constitution  in  all  its  provisions,  and  ho  accepted 
that  duty  without  reservation." 

In  his  first  inaugural,  Mr.  Lincoln  said: 

"I  have  no  purpose,  directly  or  indirectly,  to  interfere  with 
the  institution  of  slavery  in  the  States  where  it  exists.  I 
believe  I  have  no  lawful  right  to  do  so,  and  I  have  no  inclina- 
tion to  do  so/' 

And  yet  we  know  that  within  eighteen  months  from  that  time 
he  issued  his  Emancipation  Proclamation. 

EMANCIPATION    PROCLAMATION. 

As  to  this  proclamation,  it  is  worthy  of  remark,  that  it  is  claimed 
to  have  been  issued  by  virtue  of  some  kind  of  "war  power"  vested 
in  the  President  by  the  Constitution  and  laws.  The  Northern  his- 
torian Rhodes,  Vol.  4,  p.  213,  says: 

"There  was,  as  every  one  knows,  no  authority  for  the  procla- 
mation in  the  letter  of  the  Constitution,  nor  was  there  any- 
statute  that  warranted  it." 

Let  us  ask,  then,  Avhere  did  Mr.  Lincoln  find  any  authority  to 
issue  it?  Certainly  not  in  the  Constitution.  For,  says  the  Su- 
preme Court  of  the  United  States  in  Ex  parte  Milligan,  4  Wallace 
120: 

"The  Constitution  of  the  tTnited  States  is  a  law  for  rulers 
and  people  equally  in  war  and  in  peace,  and  covers  with  the 
shield  of  its  protection  all  classes  of  men  at  all  times  and  un- 
der all  circumstances.  Xo  doctrine  involving  more  pernicious 
consequences  was  ever  invented  by  the  wit  of  man  than  that 
any  of  its  provisions  can  be  suspended  during  any  of  the  great 


18 

exigencies  of  government.     Such  'a  doctrine  leads  directly  to 
anarchy  or  despotism." 

And  says  Chief  Justice  Chase,  in  the  same  case,  p.  136-7: 

"Neither  President,  nor  Congress,  nor  courts,  possess  any 
power  not  given  by  the  Constitution." 

So  that  the  issuing  of  that  proclamation  (which,  it  is  also  worthy 
of  note,  did  not  even  attempt  to  emancipate  all  the  slaves  in  all  the 
States,  as  generally  supposed,  but  only  those  in  ten  named  States, 
and  only  in  certain  parts  of  some  of  these)  was  a  palpable 
violation  of  the  Constitution  and  of  Mr.  Lincoln's  oath  of  office; 
and  the  only  plea  on  which  the  friends  of  Mr.  Lincoln  can  justify 
his  conduct  is  the  plea  of  "necessity,"  the  last  refuge  of  every 
tyrant. 

DUPLICITY  TOWARDS  VIRGINIA  COMMISSIONERS. 

But  before  we  refer  to  other  violations  of  the  Constitution  we 
propose  to  consider  some  acts  of  deceit  and  duplicity  practiced  by 
Mr.  Lincoln,  or  to  which  he  was  a  party,  on  representatives  of  the 
South. 

After  the  secession  of  seven  of  the  Southern  States  and  the 
formation  of  the  Southern  Confederacy,  with  its  capital  at  Mont- 
gomery, and  after  the  failure  of  the  "Peace  Conference"  inaugurated 
by  Virginia  in  her  most  earnest  efforts  to  prevent  war  between  the 
sections,  and  during  the  sessions  of  the  Virginia  Convention  that 
body  determined  to  send  commissioners  to  Washington  to  ascer- 
tain, if  possible,  what  course  Mr.  Lincoln  intended  to  pursue  towards, 
the  seceded  States,  since  it  was  impossible  to  determine  this  course 
from  the  ambiguous  language  employed  in  his  inaugural  address. 
These  commissioners,  the  Honorables  William  Ballard  Preston, 
Alexander  H.  H.  Stuart  and  George  W.  Randolph,  went  to  Wash- 
ington and  had  an  interview  with  Mr.  Lincoln,  and  an  account 
of  that  interview  will  be  found  in  the  first  volume  "Southern  His- 
torical Society  Papers,"  at  page  443.  At  page  452,  Mr.  Stuart 
says: 

"I  remember  that  he  (Lincoln)  used  this  homely  expres- 
sion, 'If  I  do  that  (recognize  the  Southern  Confederacy),  what 
will  become  of  my  revenue?  I  might  as  well  shut  up  house- 
keeping at  once.' '; 

But,  says  Mr.  Stuart,  "his  declarations  were  distinctly  pacific, 
and  he  expressly  disclaimed  all  purpose  of  war." 


19 

Mr.  Seward,  the  Secretary  of  State,  and  Mr.  Bates,  the  Attorney- 
General,  also  gave  Mr.  Stuart  the  same  assurances  of  peace.  That 
night  the  commissioners  returned  to  Richmond,  and  the  same  train 
on  which  they  traveled  brought  Mr.  Lincoln's  proclamation  calling 
for  seventy-five  thousand  men  to  wage  a  war  of  coercion  against  the 
Southern  States. 

"This  proclamation,"  says  Mr.  Stuart,  "was  carefully  with- 
held from  us,  although  it  was  in  print,  and  we  knew  nothing 
of  it  until  Monday  morning  when  it  appeared  in  the  Eichmond 
papers.  When  I  saw  it  at  breakfast,  I  thought  it  must  be  a 
mischievous  hoax,  for  I  could  not  believe  Lincoln  guilty  of 
such  duplicity/' 

This  proclamation  is  now  conceded  by  nearly  all  Northern  writers 
to  be  a  virtual  declaration  of  war,  which  Congress  alone  has  the 
power  to  declare.  Congress  alone  having  the  power  to  "raise  and 
support  armies" ;  to  "provide  for  calling  forth  the  militia  to  execute 
the  laws  of  the  Union,  suppress  insurrection  and  repel  invasions"; 
to  "provide  for  organizing,  arming  and  disciplining  the  militia,  and 
for  governing  such  part  of  them  as  may  be  employed  in  the  service 
of  the  United  States." 

And  yet  Mr.  Lincoln,  in  violation  of  the  Constitution  and  of  his 
oath,  did  all  of  these  things  before  Congress  was  allowed  to  assem- 
ble on  the  4th  of  July,  1861,  and  it  is  said  he  had  an  organized 
army  before  the  assembling  of  Congress  of  over  three  hundred  thou- 
sand men.  We  know  too  that,  without  any  authority  to  do  so,  he 
did  not  hesitate  to  suspend  the  privilege  of  the  writ  of  habeas  cor  pits, 
which  Congress  alone  had  the  power  to  authorize  the  suspension  of, 
according  to  the  decision  of  Chief  Justice  Taney  in  Merriman's 
case,  and  there  are  numerous  other  decisions  to  the  same  effect. 

DUPLICITY  TOWARDS  CONFEDERATE  COMMISSIONERS. 

But  again,  we  know  too  (at  least,  Mr.  Seward  says  so),  that  Mr. 
Lincoln  was  a  party  to  the  duplicity  and  deception  practiced  through 
Mr.  Seward  on  the  commissioners  sent  by  the  Confederate  Govern- 
ment to  treat  with  him  "with  a  view  to  speedy  adjustment  of  all 
questions  growing  out  of  the  political  separation  upon  such  terms 
of  amity  and  good  will  as  the  respective  interests,  geographical  con- 
tiguity and  future  welfare  of  the  two  nations  may  render  neces- 
sary." 


20 

Mr.  Lincoln  and  Mr.  Seward  practiced  this  deception  on  these 
commissioners  by  promising  the  evacuation  of  Fort  Sumter, 
through  Justices  Campbell  and  Nelson,  of  the  Supreme  Court  of 
the  United  States.  Mr.  Seward  was  charged  by  Judge  Campbell 
with  the  enormity  of  his  conduct  in  regard  to  this  matter,  and 
he  was  asked  to  explain  it,  but  no  explanation  was  ever  made,  sim- 
ply because  there  was  none  that  could  be  made. 

VIOLATIONS   OF   EULES   OF   CIVILIZED   WARFARE. 

But  again,  Mr.  Lincoln  was  the  Commander-in-chief  of  the  Armies 
and  Navies  of  the  United  States,  and  he,  therefore,  had  the  power, 
and  it  was  his  duty,  to  see  that  the  war  was  conducted  on  the  princi- 
ples adopted  by  the  Federals  themselves  for  the  government  of  their 
armies,  and  which  are  those  adopted  and  enforced  by  all  civilized 
nations.  Two  of  the  most  important  of  these  rule  swere : 

(1)  "That  private  property,  unless  forfeited  by  crimes,  or 
by  offences  of  the  owner  against  the  safety  of  the  army,  or  the 
dignity  of  the  United  States,  and  after  conviction  of  the  owner 
by  court  martial,  can  be  seized  only  by  way  of  military  neces- 
sity for  the  support  or  benefit  of  the  army  of  the  LTnited 
States. 

(2)  "All  wanton  violations  committed  against  persons  in 
the   invaded  country,   all  destruction  of  property  not  com- 
manded by  the  authorized  officer,  all  robbery,  all  pillage,  all 
sacking  even  after  taking  a  place  by  main  force,  all  rape, 
wounding,  maiming  or  killing  of  such  inhabitants,  are  pro- 
hibited under  penalty  of  death,  or  such  other  severe  punish- 
ment as  may  seem  adequate  for  the  gravity  of  the  offence." 

Now,  we  repeat,  these  were  the  rules  adopted  by  the  United 
States  for  the  government  of  its  armies  in  the  field,  and  it  was 
the  duty  of  Mr.  Lincoln,  as  the  Executive  head  of  the  government 
and  Commander-in-chief  of  its  armies,  to  see  that  they  were  respected, 
and  enforced.  We  know  how  palpably  these  rules  were  violated 
by  Grant,  Sherman,  Sheridan,  Pope,  Butler,  Hunter,  Milroy,  Stein- 
weyer,  and  in  fact  by  nearly  every  Federal  commander;  and  we 
know  too  that  these  officers  would  not  have  dared  to  thus  violate 
these  rules,  unless  these  violations  had  been  known  by  them  to  be 
sanctioned  by  their  official  head,  Mr.  Lincoln,  from  whom  they 
received  their  appointments  and  commissions,  and  whose  duty  it 
was  to  prevent  such  violations  and  outrages. 


21 

General  McClellan,  a  gentleman  and  a  trained  soldier,  wrote  to 
Mr.  Lincoln  from  Harrison's  Landing  on  July  7,  186:3,  saying, 
among  other  things: 

"In  prosecuting  the  war,  all  private  property  and  unarmed 
persons  should  be  strictly  protected,  subject  only  to  the  neces- 
sity of  military  operations.  All  property  taken  for  military  use 
should  be  paid  or  receipted  for,  pillage  and  waste  should  be 
treated  as  high  crimes,  and  all  unnecessary  trespass  sternly 
prohibited,  and  offensive  demeanor  by  the  military  towards 
citizens  promptly  rebuked."  (See  2  Am.  Conflict,  by  Greeley, 
page  248.) 

And  yet,  within  two  weeks  from  that  time,  the  Federal  Secretary 
of  War,  by  order  of  Mr.  Lincoln,  issued  an  order  to  the  military 
commanders  in  Virginia,  South  Carolina,  Georgia,  Florida,  Ala- 
bama, Mississippi,  Louisiana,  Texas  and  Arkansas,  directing  them 
to  seize  and  use  any  property  belonging  to  the  inhabitants  of  the 
Confederacy  which  might  be  necessary  or  convenient  for  their  sev- 
eral commands;  and  no  provision  whatever  was  made  for  any  com- 
pensation to  the  owners  of  private  property  thus  directed  to  be 
seized  and  appropriated. 

SHERMAN'S  CONDUCT. 

General  Sherman  says  in  his  official  report  of  his  famous  (or 
rather  infamous)  march  to  the  sea : 

"We  consumed  the  corn  and  fodder  in  the  region  of  country 
thirty  miles  on  either  side  of  a  line  from  Atlanta  to  Savannah, 
also  the  sweet  potatoes,  hogs,  sheep  and  poultry,  and  carried 
off  more  than  ten  thousand  horses  and  mules.  I  estimate  the 
damage  done  to  the  State  of  Georgia  at  one  hundred  million 
dollars,  at  least  twenty  millions  of  which  inured  to  our  benefit, 
and  the  remainder  was  simply  waste  and  destruction." 

General  Halleck,  who  was  at  that  time  Lincoln's  chief  of  staff, 
and,  therefore,  presumably  in  daily  contact  with  him,  wrote  to  Sher- 
man on  the  18th  of  December,  1864 : 

"Should  you  capture  Charleston,  I  hope  that  by  some  acci- 
dent the  place  may  be  destroyed,  and  if  a  little  salt  should  be 
thrown  upon  its  site  it  may  prevent  the  future  growth  of  nulli- 
fication and  secession." 

To  which  Sherman  replied  on  the  24th  of  the  same  month : 


22 

"I  will  bear  in  mind  your  hint  as  to  Charleston,  and  do 
not  think  that  salt  will  be  necessary.  When  I  move,  the  Fif- 
teenth Corps  will  be  on  the  right  of  the  right  wing,  and  their 
position  will  naturally  bring  them  into  Charleston  first;  and 
if  you  have  watched  the  history  of  that  corps,  you  will  have 
remarked  that  they  generally  do  their  work  pretty  well,"  etc. 
(2  Sherman's  Memoirs,  pp.  223-227-8.) 

Of  this  infamous  conduct  on  the  part  of  Sherman,  Mr.  Whitelaw 
Reid,  of  New  York,  our  present  representative  at  the  Court  of  St. 
James,  has  recently  written  in  "Ohio  in  the  War,"  pp.  475-8-9, 
referring  especially  to  the  burning  of  Columbia,  as  follows: 

"It  was  the  most  monstrous  barbarity  of  this  barbarous 
march.  *  *  *  "Before  this  movement  began,  General  Sher- 
man begged  permission  to  turn  his  army  loose  in  South  Caro- 
lina and  devastate  it.  He  used  this  permission  to  the  full.  He 
protested  that  he  did  not  wage  war  upon  women  and  children. 
But,  under  the  operation'  of  his  orders,  the  last  morsel  of 
food  was  taken  from  hundreds  of  destitute  families,  that  his 
soldiers  might  feast  in  needless  and  riotous  abundance.  Before 
his  eyes  rose,  day  after  day,  the  mournful  clouds  of  smoke  on 
every  side,  that  told  of  old  people  and  their  grandchildren 
driven,  in  mid-winter,  from  the  only  roofs  there  were  to  shelter 
them,  by  the  flames  which  the  wantonness  of  his  soldiers  had 
kindled."  *  *  *  "Yet,  if  a  single  soldier  was  punished  for 
a  single  outrage  or  theft  during  that  entire  movement,  we  have 
found  no  mention  of  it  in  all  the  voluminous  records  of  the 
march." 

Let  us  ask,  Who  alone  had  any  semblance  of  authority  to  give 
this  permission  to  Sherman  and  who  gave  it?  There  can  be  but 
one  answer — Abraham  Lincoln,  the  then  President  of  the  United 
States.  Will  the  people  of  the  South  lick  the  hand  that  thus  smote 
their  fathers,  their  mothers,  their  brethren  and  their  sisters  by 
now  singing  peans  of  glory  to  his  name  and  fame  ? 

"Lord  God  of  hosts,  defend  us  yet 
Lest  we  forget,  lest  we  forget." 

The  Xew  York  Evening  Post,  one  of  the  most  sectional  papers 
in  the  country,  said  editorially,  a  short  time  since,  that — 

"Mention  of  Sherman  still  opens  flood  gates  of  bitterness. 
He  was  a  purloiner  of  silver;  his  soldiers  spared  neither 
women  nor  children;  he  burned  towns  that  had  not  offended, 
and  cities  that  had  surrendered;  and  he  spared  not  even  the 


23 

convents  occupied  by  women  of  his  own  religious  faith."     ( See 
Myer's  letter  in  "Confederate  Cause  and  Conduct,"  p.  84.) 

GRANT   AND    SHERIDAN'S    CONDUCT. 

On  the  5th  of  August,  1864,  General  Grant  wrote  to  General 
David  Hunter,  who  preceded  Sheridan  in  command  of  the  Valley : 

"In  pushing  up  the  Shenandoah  Valley,  where  it  is  expected 
you  will  have  to  go  first  or  last,  it  is  desirable  that  nothing 
should  be  left  to  invite  the  enemy  to  return.  Take  all  pro- 
visions, forage  and  stock  wanted  for  the  use  of  your  command ; 
such  as  cannot  be  consumed,  destroy." 

And  it  was  Grant  who  suggested  to  Sheridan  the  order  that  Sheri- 
dan executed  in  so  desolating  the  Valley  that  "a  crow  flying  over 
it  would  have  to  carry  his  own  rations."  Sheridan  says : 

"I  have  destroyed  over  two  thousand  barns  filled  with  wheat 
and  hay  and  farming  implements ;  over  seventy  mills  filled  with 
flour  and  wheat;  have  driven  in  front  of  the  army  over  four 
thousand  head  of  stock,  and  have  killed  and  issued  to  the 
troops  not  less  than  three  thousand  sheep.  This  destruction 
embraces  the  Luray  Valley  and  Little  Fort  Valley,  as  well  as 
the  main  Valley." 

Contrast  these  orders,  and  this  conduct,  with  General  Lee's 
Chambersburg  order  of  June  27,  1863,  when  his  army  invaded 
Pennsylvania,  and  the  conduct  of  his  army  in  that  hostile  country, 
and  you  have  the  difference  between  barbarous  and  civilized  war- 
fare.* General  Lee's  order  was  approved  by  President  Davis; 

*  "HEADQUARTERS  A.  N.  V., 
"CHAMBERSBURG,  PA.,  June  27,  1863. 
"GENERAL  ORDERS  No.  73. 

"The  Commanding  General  has  marked  with  satisfaction  the  con- 
duct of  the  troops  on  the  march  and  confidently  anticipates  results  com- 
mensurate with  the  high  spirit  they  have  manifested.  No  troops  could 
have  displayed  greater  fortitude  or  better  performed  the  arduous 
marches  of  the  first  ten  days.  Their  conduct  in  other  respects  has, 
with  few  exceptions,  been  in  keeping  with  their  character  as  soldiers, 
and  entitles  them  to  approbation  and  praise. 

"There  have,  however,  been  instances  of  forgetfulness  on  the  part 
of  some,  that  they  have  in  keeping  the  yet  unsullied  reputation  of  the 
army,  and  the  duties  exacted  of  us  by  Civilization  and  Christianity,  are 
not  less  obligatory  in  the  country  of  the  enemy  than  in  our  own.  The 


24 

Grant's,  Sherman's,  Sheridan's  and  others  by  President  Lincoln. 
To  which  of  these  two  will  you  men  and  women  of  the  South  render 
the  meed  of  your  reverence,  honor  and  respect?  I  know  your 
answer,  because  I  know  and  honor  you. 

But  this  is,  by  no  means,  all.     Judge  Jeremiah  S.  Black,  of 
Pennsylvania,  writing  to  Mr.  Charles  Francis  Adams,  said: 

"I  will  not  pain  you  by  a  recital  of  the  wanton  cruelties  they 
(the  Lincoln  administration)  inflicted  upon  unoffending  citi- 
zens. I  have  neither  space,  nor  skill,  nor  time,  to  paint  them. 
A  life-sized  picture  of  them  would  cover  more  canvas  than  there 
is  on  the  earth.  *  *  *  Since  the  fall  of  Robespierre,  noth- 
ing has  occurred  to  cast  so  much  disrepute  on  republican  insti- 
tutions." (See  Black's  Essays,  p.  153.) 

Verily, 

"He  left  a  Corsair's  name  to  other  times 
Linked  with  one  virtue  and  a  thousand  crimes." 

GENERAL  LEE'S  LETTER  TO  THE  PEOPLE  OF  MARYLAND. 

In  the  address  issued  by  General  Lee  to  the  people  of  Maryland 
when  his  army  first  entered  that  State,  in  September,  1862,  he  said: 

"It  is  right  that  you  should  know  the  purpose  that  brought 
the  army  under  my  command  within  the  limits  of  your  State, 

Commanding  General  considers  that  no  greater  disgrace  could  befall 
the  army,  and  through  it  our  whole  people,  than  the  perpetration  of 
the  barbarous  outrages  upon  the  innocent  and  defenceless  and  the  wan- 
ton destruction  of  private  property  that  have  marked  the  course  of 
the  enemy  in  our  own  country.  Such  proceedings  not  only  disgrace 
the  perpetrators  and  all  connected  with  them,  but  are  subversive  of  the 
discipline  and  efficiency  of  the  army  and  destructive  of  the  ends  of 
our  present  movements.  It  must  be  remembered  that  we  make  war 
only  on  armed  men,  and  that  we  cannot  take  vengeance  for  the  wrongs 
our  people  have  suffered  without  lowering  ourselves  in  the  eyes  of  all 
whose  abhorrence  has  been  excited  by  the  atrocities  of  our  enemy,  and 
offending  against  Him  to  whom  vengeance  belongeth,  without  whose 
favor  and  support  our  efforts  must  all  prove  in  vain.  The  Command- 
ing General  therefore  earnestly  exhorts  the  troops  to  abstain,  with  most 
scrupulous  care,  from  unnecessary  or  wanton  injury  to  private  prop- 
erty; and  to  enjoin  upon  all  officers  to  arrest  and  bring  to  summary 
punishment  all  who  shall  in  any  way  offend  against  the  orders  on  this 

subject. 

"R.  E.  LEE,  General." 


25 

so  far  as  that  purpose  concerns  yourselves.  The  people  of  the 
Confederate  States  have  long  watched  with  the  deepest  sym- 
pathy the  wrongs  and  outrages  that  have  been  inflicted  upon 
the  citizens  of  a  commonwealth  allied  to  the  States  of  the 
South  by  the  strongest  social,  political  and  commercial  ties. 
They  have  seen  with  profound  indignation  their  sister  State 
deprived  of  every  right  and  reduced  to  the  condition  of  a  con- 
quered province.  Under  the  pretense  of  supporting  the  Con- 
stitution, but  in  violation  of  its  most  valuable  provisions,  your 
citizens  have  been  arrested  and  imprisoned  upon  no  charge, 
and  contrary  to  all  forms  of  law.  The  faithful  and  manly 
protest  against  this  outrage  made  by  the  venerable  and  illus- 
trious Mary  lander  (Taney),  to  whom  in  better  days  no- citizen 
appealed  for  right  in  vain,  was  treated  with  scorn  and  con- 
tempt; the  government  of  your  chief  city  has  been  usurped 
by  armed  strangers;  your  legislature  has  been  dissolved  by 
the  unlawful  arrest  of  its  members;  freedom  of  the  press  and 
of  speech  has  been  suppressed;  words  have  been  declared 
offences  by  an  arbitrary  decree  of  the  Federal  Executive,  and 
citizens  ordered  to  be  tried  by  a  military  commission  for  what 
they  may  dare  to  speak.  Believing  that  the  people  of  Mary- 
land possessed  a  spirit  too  lofty  to  submit  to  such  a  govern- 
ment, the  people  of  the  South  have  long  wished  to  aid  you  in 
throwing  off  this  foreign  yoke,  to  enable  you  again  to  enjoy 
the  inalienable  rights  of  freemen,  and  restore  independence 
jt  and  sovereignty  to  your  State.  In  obedience  to  this  wish,  our 
army  has  come  among  you,  and  is  prepared  to  assist  you  with 
the  power  of  its  arms  in  regaining  the  rights  of  which  you 
have  been  despoiled. 

"This,  citizens  of  Maryland,  is  our  mission,  so  far  as  you 
are  concerned.  No  constraint  upon  your  free  will  is  intended ; 
no  intimidation  will  be  allowed  within  the  limits  of  this  army, 
at  least.  Marylanders  shall  once  more  enjoy  their  ancient  free- 
dom of  thought  and  speech.  We  know  no  enemies  among  you, 
and  will  protect  all,  of  every  opinion.  It  is  for  you  to  decide 
your  destiny  freely  and  without  constraint.  This  army  will 
respect  your  choice,  whatever  it  may  be ;  and  while  the  South- 
ern people  will  rejoice  to  welcome  you  to  your  natural  position 
among  them,  they  will  only  welcome  you  when  you  come  of 
your  own  free  will. 

"B.  E.  LEE,  General  Commanding." 

No  more  severe  or  more  just  arraignment  of  the  tyranny  prac- 
ticed by  Lincoln's  administration  can  be  written  than  this,  and 
that  it  is  true  no  one  will  have  the  temerity  to  deny.  The  contrast 
here  presented,  too,  is  as  striking  as  it  is  painful.  It  is  that  between 
the  Christian  soldier  and  the  Godless  tyrant. 


26 

WHAT  XORTHERX  PEOPLE  THOUGHT  IX  NOVEMBER,  1864. 

And  it  should  never  be  forgotten  that  in  the  election  held  in 
November,  1864,  between  Lincoln  and  McClellan,  in  which  the 
platform  of  McClellan's  party  charged  that  the  war  had  been  a 
failure;  that  the  Constitution  had  been  disregarded  in  every  part; 
that  justice,  humanity,  liberty  and  the  public  welfare  demanded 
that  immediate  efforts  be  made  for  a  cessation  of  hostilities  with 
the  ultimate  convention  of  all  the  States  that  these  may  be  restored 
on  the  basis  of  a  federal  union  of  all  the  States ;  *  *  *  that  they 
considered  the  administration's  "usurpation  of  extraordinary  and 
dangerous  powers  not  granted  by  the  Constitution"  as  "calculated  to 
prevent  a  restoration  of  the  union" ;  and  which  further  charged  that 
administration  with  "woeful  disregard  of  its  duty  to  prisoners  of 
war";  that  during  this  canvass  Lincoln  was  denounced  as  a  "re- 
morseless tyrant,"  and  his  administration  as  the  "Rebellion  of 
Abraham  Lincoln."  That  out  of  a  vote  of  four  millions  of  the 
Northern  people  cast  in  that  election,  nearly  one-half,  viz.,  1,800,- 
000  voted  for  McClellan  and  in  condemnation  of  Mr.  Lincoln  on 
the  foregoing  platform  and  charges.  So  with  this  evidence  of  the 
condemnation  of  Mr.  Lincoln  •  and  his  administration,  just  five 
months  before  his  death,  by  so  many  of  his  own  people,  we  must 
be  excused  if  we  decline  to  accept  the  portraiture  of  his  character 
and  conduct  as  now  so  persistently  presented  to  us  by  these  same 
people,  and  we  must  be  excused  too  for  being  skeptical  about  their 
sincerity  in  believing  in  the  truthfulness  of  that  portraiture  them- 
selves. 

We  charge,  and  without  the  fear  of  successful  contradiction,  that 
Mr.  Lincoln,  as  the  head  of  the  Federal  Government,  and  the  Com- 
mander-in-chief of  its  armies,  was  directly  responsible  for  the  out- 
rages committed  by  his  subordinates;  and  that  the  future  and  un- 
prejudiced historian  will  so  hold  him  responsible,  we  verily  believe. 

TREATMEXT    OF    PRISOXERS. 

But  this  is  not  all.  Mr.  Lincoln  was  directly  responsible  for  all 
the  sorrows,  sufferings  and  deaths  of  prisoners  on  both  sides  during 
the  war.  At  the  beginning  of  the  war,  the  Confederate  Government 
enacted  that  "rations  furnished  prisoners  of  war  shall  be  the  same 
in  quantity  and  quality  as  those  furnished  to  enlisted  men  in  the 


27 

army  of  the  Confederacy" ;  that  "hospitals  for  prisoners  of  war  are 
placed  on  the  same  footing  as  other  Confederate  States'  hospitals 
in  all  respects,  and  will  be  managed  accordingly."  And  General 
Lee  says,  "The  orders  always  were  that  the  whole  field  should  be 
treated  alike;  parties  were  sent  out  to  take  the  Federal  wounded 
as  well  as  Confederate,  and  the  surgeons  were  told  to  treat  the 
one  as  they  did  the  other.  These  orders  given  by  me  were  respected 
on  very  field." 

At  the  very  beginning  of  hostilities,  the  Confederate  authorities 
were  likewise  most  anxious  to  establish  a  cartel  for  the  exchange 
of  prisoners.  The  Federals  refused  to  do  this  until  July  22,  1862, 
and  almost  directly  after  this  cartel  was  established  it  was  violated 
and  annulled  by  the  Federal  authorities  with  Mr.  Lincoln  at  their 
head.  On  the  6th  of  July,  1861,  Mr.  Davis  wrote  to  Mr.  Lincoln, 
saying : 

"It  is  the  desire  of  this  government  so  to  conduct  the  war 
now  existing  as  to  mitigate  its  horrors  as  far  as  may  be  possible, 
and  with  this  intent  its  treatment  of  the  prisoners  captured 
by  its  forces  has  been  marked  by  the  greatest  humanity  and 
leniency  consistent  with  public  obligation." 

This  letter  was  sent  to  Washington  by  a  special  messenger  (Colo- 
nel Taylor),  but  he  was  refused  even  an  audience  with  Mr.  Lincoln, 
and  although  a  reply  was  promised,  no  reply  to  it  was  ever  made. 

On  the  2d  of  July,  1863,  Mr.  Davis  addressed  another  letter  to 
Mr.  Lincoln  and  tried  to  send  it  to  him  by  the  hands  of  Vice-Presi- 
dent Stephens,  saying: 

"I  believe  I  have  just  grounds  of  complaint  against  the  offi- 
cers and  forces  under  your  command  for  breach  of  the  cartel ; 
and  being  myself  ready  to  execute  it  at  all  times,  and  in  good 
faith,  I  am  not  justified  in  doubting  the  existence  of  the  same 
disposition  on  your  part.  In  addition  to  this  matter,  I  have 
to  complain  of  the  conduct  of  your  officers  and  troops  in  many 
parts  of  the  country,  who  violate  all  the  rules  of  war  by  carrying 
on  hostilities  not  only  against  armed  foes,  but  against  non- 
combatants,  aged  men,  women  and  children,  while  others  not 
only  seize  such  property  as  is  required  for  the  use  of  your 
troops,  but  destroy  all  private  property  within  their  reach,"  etc. 

And  he  implored  Mr.  Lincoln  to  take  steps  "to  prevent  further 
misunderstanding  as  to  the  terms  of  the  cartel,  and  to  enter  into 
such  arrangement  and  understanding  about  the  mode  of  carrying  on 


28 

hostilities  between  the  belligerents  as  shall  confine  the  severities  of 
the  war  within  such  limits  as  are  rightfully  imposed,  not  only  by 
modern  civilization,,  but  by  our  common  Christianity." 

And  yet  Mr.  Stephens,  with  a  letter  of  this  import,  was  not  even 
permitted  to  go  through  the  lines  to  carry  it. 

Mr.  Charles  A.  Dana,  the  Assistant  Federal  Secretary  of  War, 
the  same  man  who  permitted  the  shackles  to  be  placed  upon  Mr. 
Davis,  says: 

"The  evidence  must  be  taken  as  conclusive :  It  proves  that 
it  was  not  the  Confederate  authorities  who  insisted  on  keeping 
our  prisoners  in  distress,  want  and  disease,  but  the  com- 
mander of  our  armies." 

And  that  commander-in-chief  of  their  armies,  the  one  who  had 
absolute  control  of  the  whole  matter,  was  Abraham  Lincoln.  We 
know  that  President  Davis  even  went  so  far  when  the  prisoners 
at  Andersonville  were  suffering  from  disease  and  want,  which  the 
Confederate  Government  could  not  relieve  or  prevent,  as  to  send 
a  delegation  of  these  prisoners  to  Mr.  Lincoln  to  beg  him  to  renew 
the  cartel  for  their  exchange,  and  Mr.  Lincoln  sent  these  men 
back  to  die ;  and,  further,  that  when  Mr.  Davis  offered  to  send  home 
from  ten  to  fifteen  thousand  of  these  prisoners  at  one  time,  without 
demanding  any  equivalent  in  exchange,  this  humane  offer  was  indig- 
nantly rejected;  that  medicines  were  declared  "contraband  of 
war,"  and  the  Federal  Government  not  only  refused  to  furnish  these 
for  their  own  prisoners,  to  be  administered  by  its  own  doctors,  but 
refused  to  allow  the  Confederates  the  means  to  procure  them  when 
they  were  informed  that  these  prisoners  were  dying  on  account  of 
the  need  of  these  medicines.  Hence  we  say  that  Mr.  Lincoln,  as 
the  head  of  the  Federal  Government  and  the  Commander-in-chief  of 
its  armies,  is  directly  responsible  for  all  this  misconduct  and  cruelty 
on  the  part  of  his  subordinates,  and  for  the  deaths,  sufferings  and 
sorrows  which  ensued  in  consequence  of  that  misconduct  and  cru- 
elty. 

WAS    HE    A    TRUE    FEIEND    OF    THE    SOUTH? 

But  it  is  often  said  that,  notwithstanding  all  these  things,  Mr. 
Lincoln  was  a  friend  of  the  Southern  people,  and  that  his  death 
was  a  great  misfortune  to  the  South,  since  he  would  have  been  able 
to  prevent  the  outrages,  severities  and  cruelties  of  "Keconstruction." 


29 

As  some  evidence  of  this,  it  is  claimed,  first,  that  in  the  so-called 
"Peace  Conference"  held  in  Hampton  Eoads  in  February,  1865, 
Mr.  Lincoln  offered,  if  the  South  would  return  to  the  Union,  that 
the  Federal  Government  would  pay  for  the  slaves  by  making  an 
appropriation  of  four  hundred  millions  of  dollars  for  that  purpose. 
Indeed,  it  is  claimed  that  he  said  to  Mr.  Stephens : 

"Let  me  write  'Union'  at  the  top  of  this  page,  and  you  may 
then  write  any  other  terms  of  settlement  you  may  deem  proper." 

We  undertake  to  say,  after  a  careful  reading  of  the  joint  and 
several  reports  of  our  commissioners  (Messrs.  Stephens,  Hunter 
and  Campbell),  and  after  reading  the  message  sent  by  Mr.  Lincoln 
to  Congress  after  his  return  from  that  conference,  that  there  is 
no  just  foundation  for  any  such  claim. 

Mr.  Lincoln  himself  says: 

"No  papers  were  exchanged  or  produced,  and  it  was  in  ad- 
vance agreed  that  the  conversation  was  to  be  informal  and 
verbal  merely.  On  our  part,  the  whole  substance  of  the  instruc- 
tions to  the  Secretary  of  State  hereinbefore  recited  was  stated 
and  insisted  upon,  and  nothing  was  said  inconsistent  there- 
with." 

The  instructions  to  the  Secretary  here  referred  to  in  reference  to 
slavery  were: 

"No  receding  by  the  Executive  of  the  United  States  on  the 
slavery  question  from  the  position  assumed  thereon  in  the 
annual  message  to  Congress  and  in  preceding  documents." 

And  the  terms  here  referred  to  in  the  annual  message  to  Con- 
gress were : 

"I  retract  nothing  heretofore  said  as  to  slavery.  I  repeat 
the  declaration  made  a  year  ago,  that  ivhile  I  remain  in  my 
present  position  I  will  not  attempt  to  Detract  or  modify  the 
Emancipation  Proclamation." 

i 

Certainly  there  was  nothing  in  the  Emancipation  Proclamation 
which  indicated  any  intention  or  desire  on  his  part  to  make  any 
compensation  for  the  slaves  of  the  Southern  people. 

And  Colonel  McClure,  who.  as  before  stated,  is  a  partizan  of  Mr. 
Lincoln,  and  claims  everything  for  him  that  could  possibly  be 
claimed,  says  this  matter  was  not  even  suggested  by  Mr.  Lincoln 


30 

to  Mr.  Stephens,  for  reasons  which  he    attempts  to  explain.     (See 
Lincoln  and  Men  of  War  Times,  p.  92.) 

But  again  it  is  claimed  that  Mr.  Lincoln  would  have  been  most 
lenient  and  kind  in  his  treatment  of  the  people  of  the  South  after 
the  termination  of  the  war,  and  that  hence  his  death  was  a  great 
calamity  to  the  South.  The  sole  basis  of  this  claim  seems  to  be 
that  when  Mr.  Lincoln  came  to  Eichmond  on  the  5th  of  April, 
1865,  two  days  after  the  evacuation  by  the  Confederates,  he  had  a 
conference  with  Judge  Campbell,  Assistant  Secretary  of  War  of 
the  Confederacy,  and  Mr.  Gustavus  A.  Myers,  then  a  member  of 
the  Legislature  from  Eichmond,  and  suggested  to  them  to  have 
the  Virginia  Legislature  re-assemble  for  the  purpose  of  restoring 
Virginia  to  the  Union.  In  a  statement  published  in  Vol.  36,  page 
252,  of  the  "Southern  Historical  Society  Papers,"  Judge  Campbell 
gives  an  interesting  account  of  this  interview  with  Mr.  Lincoln, 
and  says,  among  other  things: 

"Mr.  Lincoln  desired  the  Legislature  of  Virginia  to  be 
called  together  to  ascertain  and  test  its  disposition  to  co-operate 
with  him  in  terminating  the  war.  He  desired  it  to  recall  the 
troops  of  Virginia  from  the  Confederate  service,  and  to  attorn 
to  the  United  States  and  to  submit  to  the  national  authority." 

Judge  Campbell  further  says  that  whilst  he  (Campbell)  ex- 
pressed the  opinion  that  General  Lee's  army  was  in  such  a  condi- 
tion that  it  could  not  be  held  together  for  many  days,  "Mr.  Lin- 
coln did  not  fully  credit  the  judgment  that  was  expressed  as  to  the 
condition  of  General  Lee's  army.  He  could  not  realize  the  fact 
that  its  dissolution  was  certain  in  any  event,  and  that  its  day  was 
spent.  He  knew  that  if  the  'very  Legislature'  that  had  been  sitting 
in  Eichmond  were  convened  and  did  vote  as  he  desired,  that  it 
would  disorganize  and  discourage  the  Confederate  army  and  gov- 
ernment." 

In  our  opinion,  this  was  the  true  and  only  reason  why  Mr.  Lin- 
coln wanted  the  Legislature  recalled.  It  was  that  it  might  order 
the  withdrawal  of  the  Virginia  troops,  with  General  Lee  at  their 
head,  from  the  Army  of  Northern  Virginia,  and  in  that  way  destroy 
the  efficiency  of  that  army. 

But  whatever  may  have  been  Mr.  Lincoln's  motives  and  pur- 
poses at  that  time,  we  know  that  as  soon  as  he  knew  that  the  Army 
of  Northern  Virginia  had  surrendered,  and  only  two  days  before  his 


31 

assassination,  he  recalled  the  suggestion  for  the  assembling  of  the 
Virginia  Legislature  because  of  the  fact,  as  alleged,  that  conditions 
had  changed  since  he  made  that  suggestion;  and  the  great  change 
in  these  conditions  was  the  surrender  of  the  Army  of  Northern 
Virginia.  And  Colonel  McClure  himself  says,  at  page  227: 

"What  policy  of  reconstruction  Lincoln  would  have  adopted, 
had  he  lived  to  complete  his  great  work,  cannot  now  be  known." 

We  have  reached  the  conclusion,,  therefore,  that  there  is  no  good 
reason  to  believe,  and  certainly  no  satisfactory  evidence  on  which 
to  found  the  opinion,  that  had  Mr.  Lincoln  survived  the  war  he 
would  have  been  either  willing  or  able  to  withstand  the  oppressions 
of  the  malicious  and  revengeful  men  in  his  cabinet  and  in  Con- 
gress in  their  determination  to  further  punish  the  people  of  the 
already  prostrate  and  bleeding  South,  to  which  condition  of  affairs 
he  had  done  so  much  to  contribute.  A  striking  evidence  of  this  is 
furnished  by  the  statement  of  Admiral  Porter,  who  was  with  Mr. 
Lincoln  when  he  came  to  Eichmond  immediately  after  the  evacu- 
ation. Admiral  Porter  says  that  when  Lincoln  told  him  he  had 
authorized  the  re-assembling  of  the  Virginia  Legislature,  and  began 
to  reflect  on  what  Seward  would  have  to  say  about  this,  he  (Lin- 
coln) sent  a  messenger  post  haste  to  General  Weitzel  and  revoked 
the  order  before  he  left  Eichmond.  (See  Porter's  Naval  History, 
p.  779. 

Although  Andrew  Johnson  was,  as  we  heard  General  Wise  say  of 
him,  "as  dirty  as  cart-wheel  grease/'  we  have  always  believed  he 
withstood  the  malice  of  these  bad  men  longer  than  Mr.  Lincoln 
would  have  done,  and  that  he  (Johnson)  really  tried  to  help  -the 
South  after  the  war,  as  we  know  that  he  tried  to  prevent  the 
adoption  and  carrying  out  of  the  wicked  "Eeconstruction"  measures. 

We  know  that  on  May  9,  1865,  within  less  than  a  month  from 
his  inauguration,  Johnson  issued  an  executive  order  restoring  Vir- 
ginia to  the  Union;  that  on  the  22d  of  the  same  month  he  pro- 
claimed that  all  the  Southern  ports,  except  four  in  Texas,  should 
be  opened  to  foreign  commerce  on  July  1,  1865;  that  on  the  29th  of 
May  he  issued  a  general  amnesty  proclamation  (with  some  notable 
exceptions),  after  which  the  irreconcilable  differences  between  him 
and  his  party  became  so  fierce  and  bitter  that  he  was  obstructed 
in  every  way  possible,  and  came  very  near  being  impeached,  and 


32 

mainly  on  account  of  his  attempted  acts  of  kindness  to  the  Southern 
people.  So  that,,  we  are  constrained  to  say,  if  Mr.  Lincoln  was  a 
true  friend  of  the  South,  "Good  Lord,  deliver  us  from  our  friends/' 

CAREER    IN    DETAIL. 

But  let  us  now  examine  Mr.  Lincoln's  career,  somewhat  in  detail, 
and  see  what  we  can  find  in  it  to  entitle  him  to  rank  with  the  good 
and  great  men  of  the  earth. 

(1)  Up  to  the  time  he  attained  his  majority  he  was  literally  a 
"hewer  of  wood  and  a  drawer  of  water."     This  was,  of  course,  his 
misfortune,  a  thing  for  which  he  was  in  no  way  to  blame,  and  we 
only  refer  to  it  as  a  fact,  and  not  by  way  of  reproach  to  him  in  any 
sense. 

(2)  For  three  or  four  years  after  attaining  his  majority,  he  first 
kept  a  store,  then  a  post  office,  did  some  surveying,  and  employed 
his  leisure  hours  in  studying  and  preparing  himself  for  the  Bar. 

(3)  He  practiced  law  about  twenty- five  years,  and  made  but  lit- 
tle reputation  as  a  lawyer,  beyond  the  fact  that  he  was  regarded 
as  a  shrewd,  sensible  and  honest  lawyer.     During  this  period  he  was 
sent  to  the  Illinois  Legislature  four  times,  but  made  little  or  no 
reputation  as  a  legislator. 

(4)  In  1847  he  was  elected  to  Congress,  and  served  only  one 
term.     He  certainly  made  no  reputation  as  a  member  of  Congress^ 
unless  his  speech  advocating  the  right  of  secession,  as  referred  to 
by  Judge  Black  in  his  Essays,  entitled  him  to  such  distinction. 

(5)  We  next  hear  of  him  in  the  canvass  with  Stephen  A.  Douglas 
for  the  Senate,  in  which  he  did  make  reputation  both  as  a  ready- 
debater  and  stump  speaker,  and  was  regarded  as  one  of  the  most 
ambitious  and  shrewdest  politicians  of  his  time.    He  was  twice  de- 
feated for  the  Senate,  but  the  reputation  won  in  his  last  canvass  with 
Douglas    laid  the  foundation  for  his  candidacy  for  the  presidency, 
although  Seward  was,  by  far  the  foremost  candidate  for  that  office 
up  to  the  time  of  the  meeting  of  the  Convention.    This  convention, 
fortunately  for  Lincoln,  met  in  Chicago,  where  his  "boosters"  did 
most  effective  work  in  his  behalf.    He  was  only  nominated  by  means 
of  a  corrupt  bargain  entered  into  between  his  representatives  and 
those  of  Simon  Cameron,  of  Pennsylvania,  and  Caleb  B.  Smith, 


33 

of  Indiana,  by  which  Cabinet  positions  were  pledged  both  to  Cameron 
and  to  Smith  in  consideration  for  the  votes  controlled  by  them,  in 
the  convention,  and  which  pledges  Lincoln  fulfilled.,  and,  in  that  way 
made  himself  a  party  to  these  corrupt  bargains.  (1  Morse,  169; 
Lamon,  449.)  He  was  nominated  purely  as  the  sectional  candidate 
of  a  sectional  party,  and  not  only  received  no  votes  in  several 
of  the  Southern  States,  but  he  failed  to  get  a  popular  majority  of 
the  section  which  nominated  and  elected  him,  and  received  nearly 
one  million  votes  less  than  a  popular  majority  of  the  vote  of  the 
country.  (1  Morse,  178.) 

(6)  After  his  election,  he  sneaked  into  the  national  Capitol  at 
night  in  a  way  he  was,  and  ought  to  have  been,  ashamed  of  the  rest 
of  his  life,  and  commenced  his  administration  by  acts  of  deceit  and 
duplicity  and  by  palpable  violations  of  the  Constitution  he  had  sworn 
to  support,  as  already  set  forth  herein,  and  by  plunging  the  country 
into  war  without  any  authority  or  justification  for  so  doing. 

(7)  At  the  end  of  two  years  his  administration  had  become  so  un- 
popular and  was  deemed  so  inefficient,  that  the  appointment  of  a 
Dictator  was  seriously  considered,  and  Lamon  says,  if  Grant  had 
not  succeeded  in  capturing  Vicksburg  in  July  1863,  "certain  it  is 
that  President  Lincoln  would  have  been  deposed,  and  a  Dictator 
would  have  been  placed  in  his  stead  as  chief  executive,  until  peace 
could  be  restored  to  the  nation  by  separation  or  otherwise."     (La- 
mon s  Recollections,  183-4.) 

(8)  We  have  already  alluded  to  his  standing  with  the  Northern 
people  at  the  election  in  November,  1864,  when  nearly  one-half  of 
these  people  voted  against  him,  and  when,  but  for  the  improper  use 
of  the  army  in  controlling  the  election,  it  is  believed  he  would  have 
been  defeated  by  McClellan,  since  in  many  of  the  States  carried  by 
Lincoln  the  popular  vote  was  very  close.     (See  Butler's  Book  and 
McClellan' s  Platform.} 

(9)  Between  the  time  of  his  second  election  and  his  assassination, 
the  South  had  become  so  completely  exhausted,  that  he  had  only  to 
keep  his  armies,  as  already  marshalled,  in  the  field,  to  accomplish  its 
defeat.     Says  Lamon : 

"At  the  time  McClellan  took  command  of  that  army  (Army 
of  the  Potomac),  the  South  was  powerful  in  all  the  elements  of 
successful  warfare.  It  had  much  changed  when  General  Grant 


34 

took  command.  Long  strain  had  greatly  weakened  and  ex- 
hausted the  resources  of  the  South."  (Lamon's  Recollections, 
p.  199.) 

(10)   And  Lamon  says  of  him  at  the  time  of  his  election : 

"Few  men  believed  that  Mr.  Lincoln  possessed  a  single  quali- 
fication for  his  great  office."  *  *  *  "They  said  he  was 
good  and  honest  and  well  meaning,  but  they  took  care  not  to 
pretend  that  he  was  great.  He  was  thoroughly  convinced  that 
there  was  too  much  truth  in  this  view  of  his  character.  He 
felt  deeply  and  keenly  his  lack  of  experience  in  the  conduct 
of  public  affairs.  He  spoke  then  and  afterwards  about  the 
duties  of  the  presidency  with  much  diffidence,  and  said  with  a 
story  about  a  justice  of  the  peace  in  Illinois,  that  they  consti- 
tuted his  'great  first  case  misunderstood."'  (Lamon,  p.  468.) 

That  he  had  no  just  appreciation  of  the  gravity  of  the  situation,  or 
of  the  duties  ofthe  office  he  was  about  to  assume,  is  best  evinced  by 
the  character  of  the  speeches  made  by  him  en  route  to  Washington 
to  be  inaugurated.  Of  these  speeches,  the  Northern  historian, 
Ehodes.  (3  Rhodes,  303),  thus  writes: 

"In  his  speeches  the  commonplace  abounds,  and  though  he 
had  a  keen  sense  of  humor,  his  sallies  of  wit  grated  on  earnest 
men,  who  read  in  quiet  his  daily  utterances.  The  ridiculous, 
which  lies  so  near  the  sublime,  was  reached  when  this  man, 
proceeding  to  grave  duties,  and  the  great  fame  that  falls  to  few 
in  the  whole  world,  asked  at  the  town  of  Westfield,  for  a  little 
girl  correspondent  of  his,  at  whose  suggestion  he  had  made  a 
change  in  his  personal  appearance,  and  when  she  came,  he  kissed 
her  and  said,  'You  see  I  have  let  these  whiskers  grow  for  you, 
Grace.'  >; 

But  let  us  ask,  can  statesmanship  be  predicated  of  any  Ameri- 
can, who  expressed  the  opinion,  as  Mr.  Lincoln  did,  that  the  rela- 
tions of  the  States  to  the  Union  were  the  same  as  those  of  the 
counties  to  the  States  of  which  they  severally  formed  a  part? 
Surely  comment  is  unnecessary. 

Mr.  Lincoln  had  in  his  cabinet  five  of  the  ablest  men  then 
in  the  country,  and  we  think  it  fair  to  assume  that  these  men 
are  entitled  to  much,  if  not  most,  of  the  credit  (if  it  can  be  so 
called)  now  so  recklessly  and  unsparingly  ascribed  to  him.  But 
did  it  require  genius  or  ability  in  any  man,  or  set  of  men,  to  wear 
out,  as  by  "attrition,"  six  hundred  thousand  half -starved  and 


35 

poorly  equipped  men  with  two  million  eight  hundred  thousand 
well-fed  and  thoroughly  equipped  men  with  unlimited  resources 
of  all  kinds? 
Napoleon  said: 

"A  man  who  has  exhibited  no  evidence  of  greatness  before 
reaching  forty,  has  no  element  of  greatness  in  him." 

Mr.  Lincoln  was  fifty-two  when  he  was  elected  President,  and 
Lamon  says  no  one  pretended  he  had  developed  any  element  of 
greatness  up  to  that  time. 

So  that,  with  every  disposition  to  write  truthfully  about  Mr. 
Lincoln,  we  are  unable  to  find  in  his  career  any  substantial  basis 
for  the  great  name  and  fame  now  claimed  for  him  by  his  admirers 
both  at  the  Xorth  and  at  the  South,  and  certainly  nothing  either 
in  his  character,  career  or  conduct  to  engender  veneration,  admira- 
tion and  love  for  his  memory  on  the  part  of  the  people  of  the 
South. 

CAX'T  RELY  OX  WHAT  IS  NOW  WRITTEN. 

The  fact  is,  most  of  the  Northern,  as  well  as  some  Southern, 
writers  have  so  distorted  and  exaggerated  nearly  every  word  and 
act  of  Mr.  Lincoln's  that  it  is  impossible  to  arrive  at  the  truth 
about  anything  said  or  done  by,  or  concerning  him  or  his 
career  from  their  statements.  Many  illustrations  of  this  could 
be  given,  but  owing  to  the  length  of  this  paper,  one  or  two 
must  suffice.  Perhaps  nothing  that  Mr.  Lincoln  ever  said 
or  did  has  been  so  applauded  as  his  Gettysburg  speech,  a 
speech  of  about  twenty  lines  in  length,  embodying  less  than  a 
dozen  thoughts,  not  original,  but  very  well  expressed.  Lamon 
says  he  was  present  at  the  time  of  the  delivery  of  that  speech; 
that  it  fell  perfectly  flat  on  the  audience,  and  Mr.  Everett  and 
Mr.  Seward  expressed  great  disappointment  at  it.  Mr.  Lincoln 
himself  said:  "It  fell  like  a  'wet  blanket/  and  I  am  distressed 
about  it."  *  *  *  "It  is  a  flat  failure  and  the  people  are  dis- 
appointed." (Lamon  s  Recollections,  171-2.)  And  Lamon  then 

adds: 

"In  the  face  of  these  facts,  it  has  been  repeatedly  published 
that  this  speech  was  received  by  the  audience  with  loud  demon- 
strations of  approval ;  that  amid  the  tears,,  sobs  and  cheers  it 
produced  on  the  excited  throng,  the  orator  of  the  day,  Mr. 
Everett,  turned  to  Mr.  Lincoln,  grasped  his  hand  and  ex- 


36 

claimed.,  'I  congratulate  you  on  your  success,'  adding  in  a 
transport  of  heated  enthusiasm,  'Ah,  Mr.  President,  how 
gladly  would  I  give  my  hundred  pages  to  be  the  author  of 
your  twenty  lines.'  Nothing  of  the  kind  occurred  (says  La- 
mon).  It  is  a  slander  on  Mr.  Everett,  an  injustice  to  Mr. 
Lincoln  and  a  falsification  of  history."  (Idem,  p.  172-3.) 

Again  (and  we  would  not  refer  to  this  but  for  the  fact  that  it 
is  discussed  by  several  of  his  biographers  with  almost  shameless 
freedom)  :  The  relations  between  Mr.  Lincoln  and  his  wife  were 
notoriously  unpleasant.  After  he  had  fooled  her  even  when  the 
day  had  been  set  for  their  marriage  and  the  bridal  party  had 
assembled,  by  failing  to  appear,  Lamon  says:  "They  were  mar- 
ried, but  they  understood  each1  other,  and  suffered  the  inevitable 
consequences  as  other  people  do  under  similar  circumstances.  But 
such  troubles  seldom  fail  to  find  a  tongue,  and  it  is  not  strange 
that  in  this  case  neighbors  and  friends,  and  ultimately  the  whole 
country,  came  to  know  the  state  of  things  in  that  house.  Mr. 
Lincoln  scarcely  attempted  to  conceal  it,  but  talked  of  it  with  little 
or  no  reserve  to  his  wife's  relatives  as  well  as  his  own  friends." 
(Lamon,  474.  See  also  3  Herndon-Weik,  429-30.)  Herndon  says : 
"I  do  not  believe  he  knew  what  happiness  was  for  twenty  years." 
"Terrible"  was  the  word  which  all  his  friends  used  to  describe  him 
in  the  black  mood.  "It  was  'terrible,'  it  was  'terrible,'  says  one  and 
another."  (Lamon,  475;  1  Morse,  64-5.) 

And  yet,  in  the  face  of  this  testimony,  one  of  his  latest  biog- 
raphers (Noah  Brooks),  writing  for  the  series  of  "Heroes  of  the 
Nations,"  says: 

"The  relations  of  Lincoln  and  his  wife  were  a  model  for  the 
married  people  of  the  republic  of  which  they  were  the  fore- 
most pair"  (P.  422.) 

Verily,  as  Dr.  Lord  says : 

"Nothing  so  effectually  ends  all  jealousies,  animosities  and 
prejudices  as  the  assassin's  dagger."  (12  Beacon  Lights  of 
History,  314.) 

So  that,  we  repeat,  you  have  to  take  everything  written  or  said 
about  Mr.  Lincoln,  by  most  of  the  Northern  and  some  Southern 
writers,  with  many  grains  of  allowance,  for  there  seems  to  be  no 
bounds  to  their  exaggerations  and  misrepresentations.  It  is  not  out 
of  place  to  add  here  that  one  of  his  biographers,  Hapgood,  says 


37 

foreign  writers  have  written  but  little  about  Mr.  Lincoln,  which 
would  seem  to  indicate  that  they  are  yet  waiting  to  learn  the  truth 
about  him. 

We  cheerfully  admit  that  Mr.  Lincoln  was  an  honest  man  in 
the  sense  that  he  was  absolutely  free  from  what  is  now  termed 
"graft/'  and  that  he  never  manifested  any  disposition  to  "put 
money  in  his  purse"  which  did  not  properly  belong  there.  He 
may  have  been  a  patriot,  too,  in  the  usual  acceptation  of  that- 
term;  but  as  we  diagnose  his  patriotism,  it  was  so  intermingled 
with,  and  controlled  by,  an  inordinate  personal  ambition  it  is 
impossible  to  say  how  far  that  predominated.  Certainly  his  readi- 
ness to  sacrifice  the  lives  and  property  both  of  his  friends  and  his 
foes  would  seem  to  show  a  recklessness  and  heartlessness  more 
consistent  with  ambition  than  with  any  characteristic  which  was 
noble  and  good.  If  he  was  a  patriot  or  a  statesman  at  all,  he 
ought  certainly  to  have  known  that  a  union  "pinned  together 
with  bayonets,"  enforced  by  the  power  of  coercion,  "against  the 
consent  of  the  governed"  in  a  large  part  of  that  union,  could  never 
be  the  "Union"  as  formed  by  "our  fathers" 

"Popular  beliefs  in  time  come  to  be  superstitions,  and  create 
both  gods  and  devils,"  says  Don  Piatt,  in  speaking  of  how  little  is 
now  known  of  the  "Real  Lincoln."  (Men  Who  Saved  the  Union, 
p.  28.)  And  the  same  writer  further  says: 

"There  is  no  tyranny  so  despotic  as  that  of  public  opinion 
among  a  free  people.  The  rule  of  the  majority  is  to  the  last 
extent  exacting  and  brutal,  and  when  brought  to  bear  on  our 
eminent  men,  it  is  also  senseless."  (Idem,  p.  27.) 

The  North  has  had  and  has  exercised  the  "rule  of  the  majority" 
over  the  South  for  nearly  half  a  century,  and  in  many  respects  that 
rule  has  truly  been  "exacting  and  brutal,"  and  especially  is  this 
true  in  their  attempts  to  make  us  fall  down  and  worship  their  false 
gods.  Let  us  never  consent  to  do  so.  No, 

"Better  the  spear,  the  blade,  the  bowl, 
Than  crucifixion  of  the  soul." 

We  are  not  vain  enough  to  think  that  what  we  have  said  to-night 
will  have  any  other  effect  than  to  inform  the  members  of  this  Camp 
of  the  true  character  and  conduct  of  this  contradictory,  strange  and 
secretive  man,  but  we  are  vain  enough  to  think  that  you,  at  least. 


38 

will  believe  that  what  we  have  said  to  you  we  believe  to  be  the  truth, 
and  nothing  but  the  truth.  And  we  further  believe  that  if  the 
cause  espoused  by  Mr.  Lincoln  had  not  been  deemed  successful, 
and  if  the  "assassin's  bullet"  had  not  contributed  so  greatly  to  im- 
mortalize him,  his  name  would  be  now  bandied  about  as  only  that 
of  an  ordinary,  coarse,  secretive,  cunning  man  and  wily  politician, 
and  one  of  the  greatest  tyrants  of  any  age. 

But  it  will  doubtless  be  replied  to  all  these  things,  that,  admit- 
ting their  truth,  "He  saved  the  Union,  and  the  end  was  worth  and 
justified  the  means." 

If  this  was  an  argument  at  all,  we  might  feel  the  force  of  it, 
viewing  the  matter  from  a  Northern  standpoint.  But,  in  our 
opinion,  any  such  attempted  answer  is  an  evasion,  and  "beg- 
ging the  question"  now  under  discussion.  The  real  question  is,  not 
what  was  accomplished,  but  what  was  the  character  and  conduct  of 
the  man,  and  what  were  the  methods  and  instruments  employed  by 
him  to  do  his  work  ?  Was  the  character  of  Abraham  Lincoln  such  as 
to  make  him  an  ideal  and  exemplar  for  our  children,  and  were  the 
methods  employed  by  him  such  as  to  excite  and  command  the 
reverence,  admiration  and  emulation  of  those  who  come  after  us? 
We  answer,  No;  a  thousand  times,  No. 

REASONS    FOK    THIS    PAPER. 

But  some  will  doubtless  ask,  and  with  apparent  justification,  Is 
it  not  wrong  in  this  Camp  to  bring  forward  these  things,  especially 
at  this  time,  when  so  much  is,  ostensibly,  being  done  to  allay  sec- 
tional feeling  between  the  North  and  the  South  ? 

The  answer  to  all  such  inquiries  is,  to  our  mind,  perfectly  sim- 
ple and  satisfactory.  In  the  first  place,  these  efforts  to  allay  sec- 
tional bitterness  are  far  more  apparent  than  real,  as  any  one  who 
has  read  the  histories  and  current  literature  which  has  teemed 
from  Northern  presses  ever  since  the  war,  and  is  still  issuing  from 
those  presses,  will  be  forced  to  admit.  These  histories  and  this 
literature,  written  almost  wholly  by  our  conquerors,  naturally  give 
their  side  of  the  conflict,  and  they  not  only  exalt  their  leaders,  and 
seek  especially  to  deify  Mr.  Lincoln,  but  they  misrepresent  the 
cause  and  the  motives  of  the  Southern  people,  and  vilify  us  and 
our  leader,  Mr.  Davis,  in  the  most  flagrant  and  outrageous  way. 
Mr.  Lincoln  is  portrayed,  as  we  have  seen,  as  a  man  of  ineffable 


39 

purity,  piety  and  patriotism,  and  his  cause  as  the  cause  of  hu- 
manity, patriotism  and  righteousness,  whilst  Mr.  Davis  was  the 
Arch  traitor  and  felon,  our  cause  that  of  treason,  rebellion  and  in- 
humanity, our  people  are  denominated  a  "slave  oligarchy,"  and 
their  only  reason  for  going  to  war  was  to  prolong  their  "slave 
power,"  with  no  higher  motive  than  to  save  the  money  value  of 
their  slaves.  As  an  illustration  of  the  way  our  people  have  been 
misrepresented  and  maligned,  we  need  only  refer  to  the  fact  that 
such  a  Northern  writer  as  James  Russell  Lowell  has  preserved  in 
his  most  permanent  form  of  literature  statements  that  during  the 
war  our  Southern  women  "wore  personal  ornaments  made  of  the 
bones  of  their  unburied  foes" ;  that  we  wilfully  "starved  prisoners," 
"took  scalps  for  trophies,"  and  we  are  called  "rebels"  and  "traitors," 
deserving  punishment  for  our  crimes  as  such,  when  we  were  only 
defending  our  homes  against  ruthless  invasion.  In  a  word,  that 
we  are  a  bad  people,  led  by  those  who  were  worse,  whilst  they 
are  all  good  people,  led  by  those  who  did  and  could  do  no  wrong. 
These  things  are  taught  to  our  children  by  the  literature  to  which 
we  have  referred,  and  the  effect  of  such  teaching  must  in  the  end 
make  them  deplore,  if  they  do  not  come  to  despise,  the  cause  and 
conduct  of  their  fathers. 

It  is  proper  to  say  that  there  are  some  fair-minded  and  truthful 
Northern  writers,  who,  whilst  differing  from  us  as  to  the  justice  of 
our  cause,  have  had  the  manliness  and  candor  to  say  that  we  were 
honest  and  patriotic  in  the  course  we  pursued,  and  these  have 
written  kindly  and  considerately  about  us,  our  cause  and  some  of 
our  leaders,  and  to  all  such  we  express  our  appreciation  and  grati- 
tude. But  the  great  mass  of  Northern  histories  and  literature  is 
such  as  we  have  described  them,  and  especially  is  this  true  of  the 
biographies  and  literature  concerning  the  life,  the  conduct  and 
character  of  Mr.  Lincoln,  the  writers  of  these,  as  a  rule,  apparently 
seeming  to  think  they  could  only  exalt  their  subject  by  belittling  and 
belying  us,  our  cause  and  our  leaders. 

The  members  of  this  Camp  are  all  ex- Confederate  soldiers;  they 
loved  the  Confederate  cause,  and  they  love  it  still;  they  believed  it 
was  right  when  they  enlisted  in  its  defence,  and  they  believe  so  now; 
they  gave  their  young  manhood,  they  suffered,  they  made  sacrifices ; 
many  of  them  shed  their  blood,  and  have  seen  thousands  of  their 
comrades  die  on  the  field,  in  hospitals  and  in  prisons  in  defence 


40 

of  that  cause ;  they  know  that  many  of  the  things  written  about  the 
cause  and  conduct  of  the  North,  and  its  leaders,  and  especially  about 
Mr.  Lincoln,  are  false.  Are  we  so  debased  and  cowed  by  the 
results  of  the  conflict  that  we  must  remain  silent  about  these  for 
the  sake  of  political  expediency  or  material  gain,  and  not  tell 
our  children  the  truth,  when  our  quondam  enemies  have  furnished 
us  the  evidences  of  that  truth  ?  If  we  do,  then,  in  our  opinion,  we 
are  unworthy  of  our  Confederate  uniforms,  and  to  have  been  the 
followers  of  Lee  and  Jackson  and  their  compeers.  If  we  remain 
silent,  can  we  expect  those  who  come  after  us  to  speak  ?  Nay,  will 
they  not  rather  interpret  our  silence  as  a  confession  of  guilt,  and 
that  we  deemed  our  cause  an  unholy  one  ?  So  that,  it  seems  to  us, 
this  address  not  only  finds  its  justification  on  the  low  plea  of 
"retaliation  in  kind,"  but  that  its  justification  rests  upon  the  im- 
pregnable foundations  of  truth  and  necessity,  as  well  as  that  of  a 
duty  we  owe  alike  to  the  memories  of  our  dead  comrades,  to  our- 
selves, our  children  and  our  children's  children. 

"Ye  shall  know  the  truth,  and  the  truth  shall  make  you  free." 


